Golden Mask 4 WD Pro 'Preliminary Testing'

This blog isn't going to be a comprehensive review of the Golden Mask 4 WD Pro, it's just some musing about early observations with the tests I've performed. A full review will come once I've got some serious hours behind me out in the fields. The first thing I'd like to point out, I'm not going to be making comparison videos between all the machines that I own, the whole point here is to learn and understand the capabilities of each individual unit. I want to understand both their strengths and weaknesses and know what I can get away with in regards to settings and application. I like to go through this process with each new machine that I purchase, there's no point getting a detector if you're not prepared to learn it's operation both inside and out.

Taking into account that this GM machine doesn't have a display, we're going on audio alone, many will know that I find screens pointless, I love analog audio, it's so organic sounding and, depending on the machine, contains enough clues that over time, you'll start to understand. The first test I conducted was focusing on recovery speed, Golden Mask detectors inherently have a really fast recovery speed. This was one of the main reasons I wanted one, I was looking for a fast machine I could use with a small coil and swing fast in the iron. In my test I was using the 5/7' Inch fighter coil with the machine set to 18KHZ. I found the recovery and the response time to be very impressive. In multi-tone you got the merging of the audio meaning you could hear a hint of iron with each swing, however, switching to disc mode cleaned the non-ferrous target response up which in turn produced a sharper tone. 

You'll notice in the video the silky smooth audio when sweeping fast over the coins, I really like the response time, even when you add iron into the mix the machine does very well. Obviously taking it into the field and using it first hand will reveal its true performance but it's looking very promising. Moving on to modern trash, you can't discriminate out bottle caps, the discrimination just isn't wide enough so you're going to have to dig them. Occasionally you get a muted iron grunt underneath the high tone when swinging over them but that's not enough to go on when deciding if to dig the target or not. 

There is a way around this problem though, in the video below I demonstrate how slowly swinging and moving the coil backwards can I.D bottle caps rather well. You'll notice as the cap gets just past the front of the coil it will give an iron buzz. Personally I would dig them all out because it's going to help in the long run with opening the ground up, however, if you want to be a little more selective in what you dig this method might help. But remember if you're a park hunter that has to deal with a lot of bottle caps, due to the machines inability to phase them out you'll risk the chance of good targets being masked if you don't remove them.

On the subject of unmasking in iron, taking into account I'm using a DD coil and not a concentric, the GM4 WD does a fantastic job at hitting on coins next to and underneath iron nails from one angle in both 3D and same plane tests. In disc mode it cancels the iron out with minor clipping whilst in multi-tone you can clearly hear the non-ferrous hit in with the grunt of the iron. All these mentioned tests can be seen in the video below.

Moving on to ring pulls - how does the machine handle them? I can confirm that it handles them well both on 'same plane' and 3D tests. On same plane tests you can get away with covering a small shilling completely, on 3D tests you can get away with two, possibly three pull tabs before it starts to struggle to see it. Be warned, you have to discriminate quite high to knock out pull tabs and if you hunt like this you will miss small jewellery, it will give a ferrous tone. Putting that point aside, let's remember that some of the tests I'm doing are rather extreme and out in real world hunting I'm positive that if you disc out pull tabs the machine will still perform very well. 

Foil? this can be a pain especially for park hunters, actually the bloody stuff seems to appear everywhere. On same plane tests the GM4 WD can see a small silver 6 pence directly under foil, it can also see the silver 6 pence wrapped in foil. In 3D tests it can still see the 6 pence when the foil is directly over the top of it. Both these test indicate that it should perform very well if you choose to disc foil out. Remember there will be trade off and you will miss thin jewellery and tiny non-ferrous items. 

So taking into account that all the above are just tests, they suggest that the GM4 WD Pro should be a good performer out in the fields. I've said many times that these tests give you an idea of 'potential' performance, nothing compares to real world hunting and I'm fully aware of that. When I get a new unit I like to mess around with it as much as possible because it helps me to learn its language quicker. A more comprehensive review will be written once I've used the machine for a considerable amount of time in the fields.