How to Keep Your Detector in Top Condition: Advice from Joe, Our

3. Use the Right Charger

Do: Stick to a charger rated at 5V only and greater than or equal to 2A. This ensures your detector charges efficiently and safely whilst maintaining good battery health.

Don’t: Use a random charger you found in the drawer. Incorrect voltage or current can shorten your detector’s battery life or cause overheating.

4. Batteries Matter for the Pro-Find Series

Do: Use only high-quality alkaline batteries like Energizer or GP Ultra.

Don’t: Use cheap or incompatible brands such as Duracell, Kodak, or pound-shop batteries. These are intended for low-current devices such as smoke alarms and similar. A low-capacity battery can often be a cause of erratic performance.

5. Handle the Coil with Care

Do: Tighten your coil just enough to prevent the coil from flopping about. The coil fixings should be tightened such that your coil is fixed in position when detecting, but can tilt forward and backward with your hand if needed. A snug hand-tightened fit that prevents any lateral or twisting movements is perfect.

Don’t: Use any tools like a spanner to tighten the coil fixings. Overtightening can lead to damage of your coil mounting brackets/lugs. Also, an additional tip here; if your machine uses rubber washers within the coil attachment mechanism, please do ensure you change these periodically. The washers wear from friction over time and the potential of damage being induced through over-tightening when washers are excessively worn is significantly increased. Washers are a cheap consumable part and replacing these periodically as part of your routine detector maintenance will ensure a long coil life, which will save you considerable expense in the long run.

Teardrop Washers (for use with all Equinox and all Vanquish models, X-TERRA Pro, and X-TERRA Elite)

Round Washers (for us with Manticore, CTX3030, Etrac, and Safari)

6. Wrap Your Cable Properly

Do: Wrap the cable neatly around the shaft to minimize the potential of slack causing false detections. A well-wrapped cable is also less prone to getting snagged on bushes and such as you detect. 

Don’t: Let the cable dangle loosely; it’s an easy way to cause unnecessary stress on connections and may cause false signals due to detection of the cable itself.

7. Protect Your Button

Do: Ensure any keypad decals or skins you use don’t obstruct the buttons. Cutouts at button locations are essential to avoid ‘sticky’ or non-responsive buttons.

Don’t: Ignore sticky buttons—this could cause permanent issues over time. If you experience a sticky button on the keypad, remove any skin or decal to eliminate this as a potential cause; keypad overlays without button cutouts are the number one cause of ‘sticky’ or non-responsive keypad buttons.

8. Shield Your Headphone Jack

Do: Use a dust cover to keep debris out of the headphone jack when it’s not in use.

Don’t: Leave it exposed, especially in muddy or dusty conditions.

9. Most Headphones Aren’t Waterproof

Do: Use waterproof headphones when detecting in water with wired headphones and cover any non-waterproof items when detecting in rain. 

Don’t: Expose any non-waterproof accessories like wireless headphones to rain or water; it could spell disaster for your machine. There is potential for water ingress to occur if standard (non-waterproof) wired headphones are inserted into the detector while detecting in water – including surf. We commend hardcore detectorist who search in all conditions, but if you don’t cover your non-waterproof electrical items, you are likely to run into issues at some point.

*tip – sometimes when wireless headphones stop working it can often be due to a button failure and so they might still operate if you have the connecting cable. My advice is to keep the small headphone cable with you, in your car or near you so that fi the headphones stop working you can test with this and it might allow you to continue detecting with headphones.