Quote
Utmike
I found my seated half with the 6" 18KHz coil in a pile of dirt and junk that had been pushed to the back of the lot by earth moving equipment.

I found that combo to be the most effective at silver coins and high conductors with the XTERRA than anything else I tried.

I ended up selling all my coils but the 6" and the 18KHz elliptical.

Although the Xterras aren't mentioned as anyone's "go-to" machine nowadays, I have no hesitation in packing mine around as a backup. Like most any other detector, you had to get to know what it was telling you.

Thanks for the reply, Mike. It's interesting that my experiences with the Minelab X-Terra 705 pretty much match yours. It came with the stock coin detecting coil (7.5 kHz 9" open concentric). I kept adding coils, hoping to get better (in my style of detecting) performance. I bought the 'Digger' coil -- 3.0 kHz DD and the large 15" 3.0 kHz DD. At the mid-frequency range (7.5 kHz) I added the 6" concentric. For high frequency range I picked up the 6" DD and the (stock for the gold pachage) 5"x9" DD.

I had iron wrap-around issues at 7.5 kHz and worse at 3.0 kHz. The 18.75 kHz 6" DD was easily my favorite. (I bought the elliptical gold coil for completeness and still have hardly touched it.) That highest of the three frequencies didn't have the wraparound problem. I know lots (maybe all) IB/VLF's have some wraparound but having to disc out the VDI bin where silver dollars come in??!! That's too extreme for me.

I barely used the prospecting side of this detector as (unless I'm mistaken) it has very little discrimination capabilities. I've read it's good for prospecting but I have other detectors for that (e.g. Minelab Equinox 800, Fisher Gold Bug Pro).

Also interesting is that when I've done Nail Board testing, the 18.75 kHz 6" DD beats the two small lower frequency coils (7.5 kHz concentric and 3.0 kHz DD). That small higher frequency coil does pretty well on the NBPT. (I haven't tested the HF elliptical.)

The X-T 705 is well down (5th of 5) of the IB/VLF's that I own when it comes to pecking order. It's good to read someone else having a lot of the same experiences I had. I always wonder if I'm doing things wrong, or (less likely) I have a lemon.