Ground Balance & Coil Height

Does Ground Balance On A Metal Detector Matter?

Yes I Believe It Does

This has become more apparent to me since using a lot of different machines with a ground balance option and then comparing them to the detectors that I own that don't have a manual ground balance feature. On the river foreshore the machines I can ground balance run a lot more stable because you can modify the setting as you go a long. Nowadays with digital machines and 'ground-tracking', modifying a setting manually can sound like far too much hard work but for me I personally like doing it, I like to be in total control of my detectors. 

Since using Nexus it became apparent very quickly that swinging your coil above or below the point where you tune the coil to the ground can have a major effect on performance. I came to understand that swinging the coil at the exact point you've dialled it in to the ground allows the machine to run at optimum levels. It improves target response to all targets down to extreme depths and allows me to run both my sensitivity and threshold up whist still maintaining a stable machine.

What Do I Mean By This?

Simple, when you lower the coil to the ground during the GB procedure there's a point where the ground noise starts, this point can vary depending on what frequency, coil size and/or conditions you're hunting on. But the basic principle stays the same. You dial your machine into the point you hear the ground come in to play and it's from this point and height that you swing your coil. If you're below where this point is you're going to get excess ground noise, especially when using more sensitivity and/or threshold. This will actually hinder you hearing the deeper targets because they can get masked in the noise.

Dialling It In

At first it might feel counterintuitive to swing your coil slightly higher off the ground but you have to ignore that doubt, swinging the coil at the correct height will allow you to bump both the threshold and sensitivity up without effecting the stability of the machine. This will enable the detector to punch deeper, scrubbing the coil on the ground will effect both depth and sensitivity. The approach explained thus far is what I do with all of my machines that have a GB dial and after years of experimenting I can confirm that you get a lot better performance than machines with a fixed ground balance or when you're scrubbing the coil on the dirt with any machine.

My Tesoro detectors that have a manual GB also perform brilliantly with this same approach, obviously you're not going to get the performance from a Tesoro that matches the Nexus. But the point I'm making is the same, it's about understanding how to get the maximum performance out of the detector you have in your hand at the time. I believe Tesoro's punch deeper with the coil swung at the height the ground comes into play because swinging your coil in this position allows you to use more sensitivity and threshold. 

I understand there will be some people reading this who use digital detectors thinking "I don't need to GB my machine and I still find stuff". Yes that is correct but all these detectors have filters to suppress the ground as much as possible, this makes operating the detector easier for the average user and it's one less thing for people to think about. But despite what you might be finding it's still going to hinder the ability of the machine. That's why all the digital detectors at all price points display very similar performance in regards to depth and discrimination at depth.