ronniecruisin said:
Ooooooohhhh! I dunno bout that Lazy Trommel. One thing, you're bang on the money with ...Yes. The SPP is very nice indeed out of the box. I'm really digging it. Light..Sensitive. All in all....Lovely. But. tis only my learned opinion, but I reckon the Cond. switch is a must have if it's simple to do which we now know it is. I had it on my Pro OZ and found it very useful and quite unique for a Pulse machine.. With a small coil it becomes a very capable Discriminating Coin Hunter. Very unusual for a Pulse! Also handy, also with a small coil for small Gold among Trash. I found if set right, those pesky little bits of rusty wire and nails and other stuff just disappear! Of course.. you must be careful not to misuse this feature, for in some cases you may miss good targets. But IMHO well worth having, especially considering the piddling cost of the parts. Which brings me to another point. Make a smaller box. take a couple of controls off. Advertise it as the cheapest Pulse unit on the market. Put a different name on it. and hey ...Presto, the world will beat a path to your door. Most customers won't look inside and wonder, like a small percentage of us will do! They will just buy it and have fun. Electronic components are cheap. The $900 extra for the SL means nothing. It's all to do with marketing. Don't pay it! We have been given the opportunity to have an SL for $900 less. Go for it, and enjoy this little bit of luck that has been thrown our way! It doesn't happen very often!
Would it be fair to say that to get optimal results from this feature on the Whites machines that the conductivity switch, pulse delay & ground balance should all be used in conjunction with each other? How would the conductivity switch on a machine preset for small gold at a pulse delay of 10us suddenly become a capable discriminating coin detector? Whites own literature tells you to increase the pulse delay for coins etc. which isn't possible on the SPP.
The only thing I can see this switch doing is either removing your high or low tone targets which the machine or yourself have no way of telling what it is? Whites own literature again says that target conductivity can vary due to ground conditions, target shape etc. Throw in orientation of target & I would be more than cautious using it especially gold detecting. Discrimination on pulse machines is a very grey area. Not too many trust it & its probably for good reason.
Don't get me wrong here - this isn't an attack on the SPP or TDI's in any way. I still think that both of these are great value for money machines but a statement like "the $900 extra means nothing" doesn't make sense to me or seem like great advice to new people considering doing this.
What the extra $600 (SL) or $900 (TDI) does mean is you get a machine with all the functions, designed to be operated with all functions & you are guaranteed of having these functions with an intact warranty. You still aren't getting a TDI pro or SL by adding the switch only - the pulse delay seems important to this too? Modding a SPP, set up predominantly for small gold at 10us, will most likely void your warranty. If you have an issue Whites may still fix it but it would be at their discretion.
My opinion:
If you want a cheap pulse detector set up for small gold than the SPP fits the bill. If you want bells & whistles get a TDI variant.
If you aren't concerned about warranty by all means mod your SPP.
If you want a good discriminating coin detector, in my opinion, you need a VLF. That is what they do exceedingly well.
