Well, Gregg saw fit to ship me his V540 to try out. First time I've swung a minelab. Spent about 8 hours with it now and have formed my opinion.

Today's hunt was its saving grace. I have hit several areas I've worked very, very hard. Found little but a bunch of bent nails and pop tops/pull tabs that my White's machines passed on. Went to an old park in my neighborhood that has undoubtedly seen thousands of coils. I rarely find anything there, but they had recently moved some dirt, so thought i'd give it a shot. After getting tired of the chatter in the recently filled area, i moved to an old, but less used part of the park that I've never found an old item in. Shortly, i dug several deep (6"+ pop tops) and a deep nickel. Not long after, i pulled what I'm pretty confident is the top of an old crotal bell.....then an old Assembly of God label pin...and then an 1887 V nickel. Also a wheat in the recently moved dirt.

So, what did i think and what did i learn about this machine. First off, I'm comparing against my various white's machines as that is what i swing (IDX, V3i, MX sport, M6). I ran the machine mostly in coin mode, iron bias low, gain about 3 notches from max, iron audio on. I also tried relic mode which is definitely slower response.

Short answer.....i wouldn't' trade the V540 for any of them. I believe i found a strength however. In pretty clean ground, it hits deep on low conductors, more so than I'm use to with my White's equipment. I like its balance, even w/ the 9x12 coil. Light machine. Wireless headphones work well enough and have good sound.

What didn't i like....or maybe what am i not used to....
- Tones don't have enough separation and aren't adjustable. Combined with the noise from multi IQ, it was a scramble of similar frequencies. Made it hard to pick out an actual good target. Good tones are like all others - rather staccato and doesn't have any delay/hit hard when getting a stronger target.
- Multi IQ is fine...but it is a noisy machine with any junk around and in ground with rocks and variable substrate it was noisy. On my higher end V3i, you can set the machine to only respond when to a certain number of positive hits within a frequency range...cutting down on chatter. I can only assume this beeps on anything it sees, no matter how small, eddy currents, etc.
- Gain and pinpoint are so close together i was always hitting them both at the same time.
- Always falls over when you set it down as it has not solid base
- Eats batteries
- It likes iron - bent nails to be specific. Dug a lot of junk i have passed over dozens of times w/ my other machines. Granted, i was running in low bias, but wanted to see iffys.
- hard to pinpoint well. Always seemed to be on the heel of the coil
- no overload signal; all signal big and small sound exactly the same until you pinpoint
- Didn't like relic mode as it was slow enough in response in the iron that it took an area that had signals in coin mode and effectively masked them. Not sure I'd find a coin in iron w/ Relic mode.
- Compressed VDI scale. Hard to distinguish possible signals as many lump together between 25 and 31. I'm used to space on the scale and you can often ID no desirable non ferrous material in the VDI mid ranges. Nothing is as good as your eyes, but you can tell quite a lot. This scale compresses everything tightly enough its hard to draw any conclusions - might be better off w/o the display.


Is this fair to compare the v540 to my other equipment. I think so - at least all but my V3i. I recognize this is a midrange type machine, but its lacking in a lot of areas that i simply couldn't see putting it into my regular use collection....even with its strength in low conductors. Maybe its a gold coin magnet??

Anyway, one guys possibly slanted opinion. Take it for what its worth!

Zincoln



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/16/2021 10:59PM by zincoln. (view changes)