Went for a play this morning, mainly to do some testing on the AF-E1500.
Small Gold: I have a dozen bits of 0.07 to 0.1gram gold that have been found with one detector or the other (mainly G Kruzer) that other detectors cannot see. All are wiry or reefy or foil like. E1500 can see 6/12, SDC can see 4/12 & 6000 can see 1/12.
Depth: I have a test patch near a shale mullock heap & I stack slabs of shale on targets to test them. Not ideal but good enough. E-1500 is not close to 6000 in terms of depth but with comparable coil it is close to SDC. One day it will be interesting to see how it goes with a big coil.
ID: Pinpoint mode goes about 90% as deep as motion mode so towards the limit of detection depth it is quite possible to detect a target that then fails to be found with the pinpointer. This is no different to any VLF I have ever used & no biggy, especially since you only need to scrape an inch or two closer and the pinpointer finds it & you get an ID. The fantastic bit is that ID number then remains pretty much the same at all distances closer to the coil. This is a big improvement on VLFs where in all the ones I have used the ID slides down to zero as depth increases. So far I haven’t figured out the best way to use this info as I need to find more undug targets, pinpoint them and gather stats.
Hot Rocks : Sadie loves them. In this patch the vast majority IDed at 16-18 but a couple at 56-58. The 12 Evo was a pleasant surprise as besides ignoring most of the hot rocks the Sadie found, it also ignored a whole stack of ones I had found previously with the GPX6000 11 and had arranged as a nice border to the patch
. Putting the 12 Evo on UltraFine found more hot rocks but still nowhere near the Sadie. In this patch SDC is much quieter than either 6000 or E-1500
I am not sure if the Sadie is any worse than the 6000 at hotrocks – actually it probably is worse, but since the threshold on the E1500 is a lot more stable than on the 6000 anything popping its head up is noticed whereas it is harder to tell on the 6000 with its wobblier threshold. At least you can shift the threshold up on the E1500.
Ground Balance: Been a while since I have “manually” ground balanced
. Makes you appreciate the ML detectors tracking but it was no big deal to do and I appreciated knowing when the GB had really shifted so I could decide if the area was worthy of more investigation.
Controls are very intuitive if you have used a Nox– I only had to refer to the quick start guide once and there are onscreen helpers.
I am undecided on the
coil shaft connector – it is definitely a little more difficult than normal to put a coil on as you have 4 things to align to get the bolt thru rather than 2 but having support outside the shaft should make it stronger, so lets see.
Weight is good at 2150g with 12Evo vs 2770g for GPX6000 with 11ML & 3100g for SDC with 14x9. Balance is good but the shaft is long enough that I am going to slide the handpiece down 100mm and move the arm rest to bottom limit of its track. This will push the battery pack 100mm back giving even better balance.
So after all that I went for a quick detect before it got too hot. Scored a 0.25g reefy bit in an area that I had flogged previously with SDC & 6000. I checked it after on the 6000 and it could also see it.
First impressions are it is NOT a 6000 by quite a way, but depending on what aspect you look at it is noticeably better or a little behind a SDC2300. And way more configurable than either.
. That makes the price look a lot more attractive and I do like some of the features.
