If you are considering the hobby or looking for that first detector you are likely trying to cope with some fancy "tech speak" that you may not understand. The purpose of this article is to make you more familiar with the terms and help you to comprehend the problems involved. The general problems that new detectorists run into have to do with mineralization and the wet sand at the beach. Before choosing a detector you must ask others that detect near you about the problems with mineralization to see if it will effect your choice of detector. If you have a problem in your area then ask the others what kind of detector works well there. Next many detectors make claims about beach or salt modes for hunting along the waters edge and they are not all true. The problem is that most detectors will work ok on the dry sand but the jewelry is generally down by the waters edge and you will notice that most detectors just chatter so loudly that you would miss the small signal of a diamond ring. When hunting the wet sand it is a good idea to use a discriminating detector with a ID readout to tell you what the target is before you dig it. By saying discrimination I mean the function of a detector to eliminate certain signals that may be only trash. You will not discriminate anything but iron at the wet sand because gold rings will ID as pulltabs or foil and you must dig all of them to find gold. To find a detector that really works in the wet sand is a chore and there are different beaches also with higher mineralization levels. Again it is important to ask others who hunt there what detector that they are using and if it has problems with the wet sand. Just to get you started I will mention that the newer Fisher detectors have a salt mode and several others work also in the wet sand but you should research your area for yourself.
Some detectors have a speaker and earphones while others just have earphones. If you will beach hunt you must use earphones because of the roar of the surf will cover up the small beeps and also if you are using the detector around people you will attract kids with the speaker and annoy others with the sound. For most of the time I find the earphones more desirable than the speaker and generally don't use the speaker unless it is extremely hot and the earphones are sweaty. I prefer earphones with dual volume controls and I have some ear damage and need to balance the sounds so that works for me and I also would not prefer a detector without a volume control. Ear phones may be an option but worth the investment. Even if you are a large strong person the weight of the detector has an important part to play when you have detected for hours and your arm is aching. I find that a detector is more enjoyable if it is under 3 1/2 pounds with the batteries included and some manufacturers have learned this while others still produce the big and heavy detectors. This is a prime concern as you will learn later. There are detectors made today that consume a set of new batteries in only a few hours time making the cost of replacement a large factor and a disappointment for users who discover this about their new detector. Always look into battery life as it is a prime concern also and while nicad rechargeable batteries help they generally wear out after a years heavy use and cost more to replace. A manufacturer should include an indicator for the battery to show whether it is fully charged or low but some still don't and low batteries can cause the depth to decrease some.
In the beginning most detectors just beeped or whistled when they found a coin and some had a method of tone identification which is still in use today in certain detectors. Manufacturers added feature upon feature and this is a major problem today when they have loaded down the detector with so many features that it is heavy and drains the batteries very quickly. It has become popular to use the liquid crystal displays (LCD) to ID your target and readout the depth of the coin. If you choose one of these you must be careful not to accidentally hit the display with your digging tool as they are damaged easily. The choice of some form of ID display is up to your preference but I have found them very handy when I get tired of digging. The warranties may cover from lifetime to as little as one year and if I pay for an expensive detector I want to be sure that it is covered for a few years anyway and I don't think anything less than two years is reasonable. Speaking about expense you may want to try a friends detector or rent one to see if you want to continue with the hobby before purchasing your first detector. Most folks continue to buy more expensive detectors because they enjoy the hobby so much and I have found that the entry level or low priced detectors are not really satisfying and you will miss many targets. I suggest if you are sure that you will like the hobby that you purchase a mid priced detector that is between the $200 and $1200 range and most detectors in that price range provide good machines while the cheap ones may not find anything very deep or may require you to dig everything.
I recall the first time I heard that detectors had discrimination I was put off by the sound of it, and did not understand why we needed anything more, but the discrimination feature is the singular most important function of the detector. If you hunt in clean areas with a high ratio of good finds to trash you may not even use it but most of us find it a handy device to cut out all of the extra digging. Some detectors use just a knob to add more discrimination and truncate the lower end of the metal spectrum starting with iron and foil and pulltabs and the notch features for discrimination are truly a great improvement. They allow the user to notch in or out certain targets without just truncating the lower end of the range. The more control over this feature is highly desirable. Since one of the hazards of detecting is the crushed aluminum can which can give false signals a large target warning is very helpful but not necessary since a user can learn how to distinguish most of them without digging. Most users will want the standard 8 inch coil and a small coil for working high trash areas like the old parks so it is important to get a detector with interchangeable coils. Something to consider if you are opting for the tone ID detector and that is good hearing. Many detectorists are older and may have impaired hearing and miss some of the tones. Choose a detector with a sensitivity control or depth control. If it is not weatherproof then purchase the rain cover because sooner or later you will get caught in a shower and moisture in the works may destroy your detector and invalidate your warranty.
Some detectors come with different modes of operation with presets like coin mode, beach mode, all metal or others. They may allow you to modify these settings or they may allow you to program your own mode for your specific area and I have found this desirable although some detectors take this to the extreme and users may waste time fiddlin' with knobs instead of hunting. Be careful not to fall for the "head games" some manufacturers use but always compare air tests and features that pretty well take care of themselves because when you are finding a lot of coins you will not want to have to spend time adjusting the detector instead of finding coins. Some folks will exaggerate to extreme just how deep their detector will pick up a object but be sure you look at what they are finding and use some common sense because depth isn't everything and most of the coins are within six inches deep. The detector may have a threshold control to set for optimal operation and some are automatic.
Ground balance is a prime concern if you live in a highly mineralized area. Detectors may come with manual, preset, or automatic ground balance and if you have a lot of mineralization you should make sure to get a manual ground balance to adjust to your area because the preset may not work well and the automatic may not compensate enough for the problem. Some detectors have a boost feature used primarily for depth but be careful to try it out first because some of them just draw more battery current without giving you much if any additional depth. Not all the whistles and bells are desirable and it is becoming more evident that they are actually impacting performance in some expensive detectors. The higher priced detectors may have so many features added to charge more that actually prevent a good detector from operating at peak performance. Several new detectors now are offering multiple frequencies which may be an asset of questionable value. Most detectors these days use a feature called "motion" which simply means that the coil must be moving to sound a signal when a coin is detected and seems to work well but if you will primarily hunt for relics or gold you will want a "no motion" or "all metal" feature.
The important thing is to find out what you will be hunting for and what others in your area find. You may be lucky enough to live in the northeast where the old colonies were and the oldest coins may be found or near natural treasures like silver or gold but where you find yourself you will have interesting things to hunt and don't worry because you can have just as much fun with your hobby. If you live in a rural area with out much activity to lose coins or jewelry then look into old farms and homesites where you can look for caches of old gold or silver and perhaps relics. The folks that live around the old Civil war sites can have lots of fun finding artifacts from the war and there have been many early camps where you can find relics. Join a club and you may get a discount at a local dealer. Some dealers offer 25 percent discount and may be preferable to buying the detector at a discounter but they are available on the internet and you can find them listed on the links pages.
The detector has functions that are not listed among its features and known only to the manufacturer. The first and most important is that your detector will be "tuned" for maximum performance either for silver coins or for gold. Most folks who use the detector may not be aware of this but this is something that you can determine for yourself and should, especially if you want to find things like small gold rings or old silver coins. You must know what you want to look for before choosing a detector for its gold/silver tuning and folks who just coinshoot in the park may not care about anything else but coins and would prefer the right end of the metal spectrum or deep silver coins over gold. Even the detector that is tuned for silver will pick up a gold ring but not as deep as one that is tuned just for gold. The gold tuned one will pick up a large gold ring deeper than a half dollar coin but will find coins almost as deep as the silver tuned one. It probably is not important unless you are specifically looking for gold or silver and if you hunt for general targets it should not matter very much to you. If you plan to hunt the beach for jewelry then I would want a gold tuned detector. You can go to the dealer and take a large gold ring and a coin of about the same size and see just how far away it will pick them up at. I always measure this depth with a ruler or yardstick for an accurate reading. The second thing to be aware of is that your detector may pickup the deepest coin on either the fastest swing or the slowest one and I prefer the fast one because I cover a lot of ground in a day and if I spent all my time going slow I would only find a fraction of what I have found. Some folks seem to prefer the slower detectors and that is up to you. You can test the detector for this at the extreme depth level and swing the target slow and fast to see which one will find the coin the deepest.
