Light weight, excellent depth and sheer simplicity of operation make the CS1MX an ideal choice for beginners and professional detectorists on a tight budget.
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| Operating System: |
Motion: 17kHz |
| Search-Head: |
20cm ISOCON search head |
| Battery Power: |
1 x PP3 (MN1604, 6LR61) |
| Weight: |
1.153Kg |
| Features: |
On/Off control/Sensitivity, Fully variable Discrimination control, Auto-Retune, Adjustable stem length. Counterbalanced stem with armrest, Headphone socket. |
| Ideal For: |
Beginners and professionals, mainly inland use. |
The first thing which struck me when I picked up the CS1MX was its incredibly light weight. That's a real bonus for any enthusiast who spends a lot of hours out in the field. There's a feeling of quality in the construction of the CS1MX. The balance is excellent.
My philosophy for trying out a detector is to just take it out for the entire day and work with it just as if it were my regular detector. I've been detecting for 25 years and my usual detector has a lot more specification than the CS1MX so I was a little anxious about how the day would turn out.
There's a neat slot-in compartment for the battery. Powering up the detector is simply a matter of switching on and turning up the sensitivity. A quick test in air indicated detection range of around 30cms on an average coin which certainly puts the CS1MX into the 'professional class'. Setting out detecting on a section of ploughed and rolled farmland, it was possible to maintain a high sweep speed. The CS1MX is responsive and extremely light on the arm. I prefer to set the discrimination control as low as the site allows. Even zero discrimination is good when there's little rubbish about. That way you get maximum depth and it's easy to distinguish iron by its characteristic signal. I found that I could doublecheck 'iffy' signals by trying higher levels of discrimination. Whilst the CS1MX has nothing like the discrimination capability of the top machines, it is sufficient for the vast majority of UK farmland sites. There's no pin-point control on the CS1MX so to identify the exact target position you just reduce your sweep arc until the search-head is almost stationary. That's no handicap when the detector is as light and responsive as the CS1MX.
The automatic feature of the CS1MX could cope quite well with changes in ground moisture, but a change to mineralised earth or patch of coke required sensitivity adjustment. I imagine that high levels of salinity on wet sand beaches would cause similar problems.
And so my day's detecting progressed. I liked the CS1MX for its sheer simplicity of operation. The depth is superb. My final tally for the day was 12 non-ferrous targets, 3 of them valuable, retrieved from depths of 10 - 25 cms, and 1 large iron gate bolt found at 40cms (the CS1MX was trying to tell me it was rubbish, but it was me who thought it might be 'a hoard').
VERDICT
I really enjoyed the CS1MX. It is an excellent general purpose detector with some performance characteristics comparable with machines 3 times the price. In common with any hobby product, a professional will be able to get more performance out of the CS1MX than an amateur. The CS1MX puts professional performance levels within everyone's budget. The best value for money I've encountered in my 25 years of hobby experience.
The C-Scope 1MX has two controls, a sensitivity control which also turns the detector on & off and a discrimination control which allows you to knock out unwanted items like nails and other ferrous items right up to pull tabs and bottle tops, It comes with a 8" polo coil as standard which is very lightweight.
Field test
I took the 1MX out to a roman field which I use for field testing detectors. This field is littered with iron and other ferrous items and very hard work to detect. I turned the detector on and turned the sensitivity up until I got a faint threshold tone, then I set the discrimination half way into the green section (3.5). I started detecting and noticed that I was digging quite a lot of nails so turned the discrimination up to the far end of the green section (5). This stopped the nails from coming through. I dug quite a few small roman coins which is very good as I have really hammered this site with other top of the range detectors in the past. These coins were all coming from good depth, average of 4 inches - I say this is good depth as on this site it is very hard to find anything any deeper because of the grounds ferrous oxide content.
One thing I noticed was how quiet this detector worked on the soil, I was very surprised to say the least.
The next field I took the detector to was pasture. The soil is what I call normal here and coins etc are quite deep. I setup the 1MX as I did before but lowered the discimination back to 3.5. I detected for a half hour with the odd pop & spitting noises from iron but nothing else. I then hit an area of the field that had produced coins before and started to get some very good signals, all were old pennies which were at a depth of 7" to 8" deep which for a detector in this price range is extremely good.
Conclusion
The 1MX is a motion detector and is very simple to use and leaves the user's mind free for the pleasure of detecting. It will achieve excellent results for the beginner and more experienced detectorists alike. At £159.00 it is excellent value for money, it runs off 1 x 9 volt battery which gives about 20 hours use.
It also comes with a 5 year warranty which is a real bonus in this day and age and as I have said in previous field tests, it comes with the satisfaction of knowing you have the best after sales service in the industry.