Advice Needed - New Metal Detector

[fred]

I have a White Electronics Coinmaster IV Discriminator metal detector that my dad must have bought in 1976, since it has a Bicentennial sticker on it. I have had mixed results wiht it, to say the least. When I first tried it out in about 1980, I found a couple of Indian-head pennies lying side by side within a few minutes. Many hours of use since have produced only three more coins, two of them from the 1980's. While it does fine at finding large pieces of scrap iron, it does not seem to be able to find coin-sized objects buried more than a couple of inches deep. Spent .22 caliber brass lying just beneath the surface of my back yard where my son and I shot a couple of years ago does not even produce a peep. A couple of questions:

1) Would a more modern, reasonably priced detector like the Ace 250 that gets favorable mention in this forum noticeably improve my ability to find coins and other relics? Remember that my detector was produced in an era when each computer was housed in a room the size of a high school gym.

2) Are my results with my present detector typical? I'm certainly willing to awknowlege that my technique may be sub optimum. Could be that my detector is a "beginner" model?

[cchughs]

Hi and welcome Fred.
I am not familiar with your Coinmaster but I think they are pretty good machines. I am guessing that either there is something wrong with it or you might have the settings wrong and are discriminating out too much stuff.
I started in the hobby a few months ago and purchased the ACE 250. If I go to any park or playground in my city I will find about 20 coins per hour. I would think your machine should do at least as well.
My only advice would be to maybe try to find a manual and read up on the machine.
Only other thing I can say is that if you should decide to purchase another detector, I am very happy with my ACE.
Good luck.

[TonyinCT]

Although a good detector in its day , the Coinmaster IV is no longer considered very good at all. A TR detector it has a lotof limitations. The newer VLF detectors are the way to go. The Ace 250 alone will double the performance and it's considered entry level. If you need anything else let me know.