It's 4:45 AM and 27° outside, but I plan to take advantage of the day when it warms up to a mostly sunny 45°.

OVERALL MISSION: To continue trimming my detector outfit to the few models I rely on for my Relic Hunting needs, and establish a better 'support team' for more urban Coin & Jewelry Hunting tasks. More mobility issues have limited me handling the typical rough terrain where I prefer to hunt, so I am making a shift back to doing most urban parks, schools, parking trip, sports fields and other typical coin and, hopefully, jewelry production places..

I know what my CoRe, Relic, Bandido II µMAX and ORX can do hunting the old sites, and yes, they can take on some of the urban places as well. But I am trying to find a model or two that will help handle a better variety of 'local' places to hunt. Something to complement my F44, Simplex⁺ and Silver Sabre µMAX. For most urban locations I want visual Target ID and audio Tone ID, and I need a unit that is lighter weight and well balanced to be comfortable for me to use. Something that might prove to be a better Coin Shooter than a Relic unit.

So today I'll start to do some in-the-field evaluation work and find out if my new Minelab Vanquish 540 Pro is going to be the unit to fit in my Regular-Use Detector Outfit. I know, I know ... many are asking why I bought a Minelab Multi-Frequency detector? Well, I didn't buy a Minelab M-F model, I bought the Vanquish 540 Pro specifically. I am fully aware the Equinox 800 is their leading modern offering and the 600 is a slightly reduced-feature version. And I know the EQ-800 has some adjustment feature advantages over the Vanquish 540, too. But the big rave so many people spout about is the "Multi-IQ" design which is simply an approach to Simultaneous Multi-Frequency, and if it works, and works well enough for Coin & Jewelry Hunting, then the Vanquish 540 will do the job, yet keep things simple.

I knew beforehand that the Vanquish was going to have some shortcomings and lack some of the basic performance I need to best handle the dense Iron Nail and other ferrous challenges I usually encounter, especially using the Multi-IQ performance. Jeff in Colorado, who uses an EQ-800 already confirmed that with a simple 'test' I posted on Friendly Metal Detecting Forums for users to try. He did, and then he kindly posted his results which confirmed what I have stated for a while, and that was the EQ-800 using Multi-IQ wouldn't perform well on a short-stack of 2-Silver Half-Dollars on top of 2-Silver Dollars.

Not carded or separated, just stacked bare-metal on bare-metal, to simulate a small stash of hidden coins you might encounter in or around an old house, barn or out-building. The Equinox can't do it in Multi-IQ, nor can the Vanquish 540. The Equinox can, if you take it out of M-F and use the right selected Single-Frequency, which goes to prove that SMF detectors are not always going to be the better performers for all applications. And a little hint here .... there are a lot of single-frequency detectors, from budget-grade to upper-end, that also can't provide a good hit on that 'short-stack' of silver coins.

They also don't 'pass' my Nail Board Performance Test with their 6" or 11' DD coils using SMF. Well, my suspicions were confirmed that the Vanquish 540 using Multi-IQ, even when using that nice-sized 5X8 DD coil, fails to 'pass' my NBPT. However, it does OK with the 5¢ coin between two Iron Nails on the 1X4 board, and that means it might still handle some milder cases of iron contamination we might find in some urban Coin and Jewelry Hinting applications.


TODAY'S GOAL: Work with the three factory-preset modes (Coin, Relic and Jewelry) and determine which of them provides the separation (Minelab's term for Recovery Speed) and achievable Depth-of-Detection so I can adjust the Discriminate for that mode and Save it to the Custom mode for future hunting. I also want to get to know the strengths and weaknesses of the Vanquish 540 for most Coin Hunting I'll do, as well as the performance of the two search coils it comes with. I have three sites to visit today: An older, long-used city park; a CCW and Japanese Internment Camp location; and a plowed (hopefully dry enough and not muddy) former yard / now field around an old homesite.

Away from EMI I should be able to run at full Sensitivity, and with some side-by-side comparisons I'll see if the Vanquish can provide enough depth-of-detection to match what I have been getting using two of my other Coin Hunting models . Initially, I am a little leery about some of the claims I've read on some forums about it, but I'll find out.

Who knows, after today, and for sure by the end of the month, I'll n=know if I'll be a regular contributor to this Forum or not. Only hands-on experiences can determine that.

Wish me best of success .... if you're Minelab fan!

Monte

"Your EYES ... the only 100% accurate form of Discrimination!"
Stinkwater Wells Trading Post
Metal Detector Evaluations and Product Reviews monte@ahrps.org ... or ... monte@stinkwaterwells.com 503-481-8147Detectors: I rely on an assortment of personal favorites I happen to like that work for me when and where I need them.Pinpointers: Makro & Pulse-Dive .. Headphones: Killer B's 'Hornet' & 'Wasp' ... Detector Pro's Gray Ghost XPNote: Detectors are listed alphabetically by Brand. Models are chosen based on search site conditions.*** All working well today to make memories for tomorrow. ***