Minelab Vanquish 560

Back in September last year, the Treasure Hunting team were invited to the National Gallery in London for a special launch event hosted by Minelab. Naturally, speculation was rife. Was it a new detector? A wireless pinpointer? Perhaps a long-awaited update to the hugely successful CTX? Personally, that was where I thought Minelab might be heading.

Set within one of London’s most impressive venues, the gallery provided a spectacular backdrop for the evening. Surrounded by world-famous paintings and many familiar faces from the detecting world, the anticipation steadily built. Then came a sneak reveal of the new Vanquish range when we noticed some pop-up banners displaying the new models. I remember chatting with Gary Blackwell beforehand and agreeing that if Minelab were launching a new Vanquish, it would need to be something special. After all, the original Vanquish range was, and still is, a cracking range of detectors for the price. Admittedly, by modern standards it was beginning to show its age, with its AA batteries, waterproof only coil, and a fairly basic LCD screen. Yet despite that, it earned a loyal following thanks to its simplicity, performance, and ability to find the goods. With my original Vanquish 540 I have found more hammered coins with that than any other machine over the years. The original Vanquish range offered Equinox-style multi-IQ performance starting with the 340, 440 and top of the range 540.

After the pretty swish introduction to the event by TV presenter Helen Skelton, Minelab’s President and Executive General Manager, Ben Harvey (Fig.1), followed with a detailed presentation of the new Vanquish 60 range. Still continuing with three models 360, 460 and 560 the key benefits over the old machines were:

This showed very worthwhile upgrades for the new range, especially on the lower-end models. It very much reminded me of the X-Terra Elite but on steroids with a host of minor but very much up-to-date features the range needed (Fig.2).

First Impressions

The Vanquish series has long been one of Minelab’s most popular beginner and intermediate ranges, and having had a hands-on look at the machines at the London gallery, I already had a good idea of how the machine would feel in the hand and how the features worked. When my 560 Pro-pack arrived, I was very keen to get it out in the field and compare it to the old 540 machine, but straight away the improved ergonomics of the new 60 series were evident.

The first thing that stands out is the tube-like casing under the much refined and slimmer control box where the rechargeable lithium-ion battery resides. Commonly, Minelab place this in the handle of their machines, but with the new 60 range they have decided to move it, possibly for balance or ease of replacement in the future? However, there is now no more fiddling about taking batteries in and out to recharge them, thanks to the excellent magnetic charging adapter as seen previously on other Minelab machines. The soft red silicon rubber style grip under the handle I found extremely comfortable and, with the added bonus that it grips to the top of your spade when resting it on the machine (Fig.3).

On turning on the machine, you are given the clean and very simple to use LCD display with improved flat keypad buttons like those on the higher end machines, plus now a red backlit display to help on those gloomy winter mornings or late evening detects in summer. The navigation is simple, making it a machine you can simply turn on and go (Fig.4). I know I have used a fair few machines over the years, but if you are buying this as your first machine or upgrading from the previous Vanquish range, you don’t need a degree in electronics to get started. Switch it on, pick a search mode and head for the field or beach. If you can operate a television remote, you’ll have the Vanquish mastered in minutes.

Visible Improvements

Comparing the Vanquish 540 and the new 560 side by side (Fig.5) you can clearly see the visible improvements, with the screen going from landscape to portrait and a reduction in the number of buttons – in terms of ergonomics, Minelab have done an excellent job all round. The detector feels well balanced, with the weight distributed nicely between the coil and control housing. At around 1.3kg, it remains light enough for all-day use and never felt cumbersome during my detecting sessions. Another noticeable upgrade is the increase in adjustability. Previous Vanquish models were designed very much as turn-on-and-go detectors, whereas the new range offers greater control over settings such as ground balance, iron bias and audio. Experienced detectorists will appreciate the additional flexibility, while beginners can still leave many of the settings alone and simply start detecting.

The move to a fully waterproof design is another major step forward. The new range changes that completely, allowing the entire machine to be submerged, opening up opportunities for beach and shallow-water detecting without concern. Feature-wise, the 560 sits somewhere between the original Vanquish series and the X-Terra Elite. The addition of a more detailed target ID scale, enhanced audio options, improved discrimination and expanded search modes give the machines a much more capable feel. In fact, after spending some time with the machine, I couldn’t help feeling that Minelab has effectively taken many of the best aspects of the X-Terra Elite and incorporated them into a more affordable machine.

First Day Out in the Field

I was excited to take out the 560 for its first spin as I knew I could just turn it on and detect without having to sit down and understand all the settings and features. Fortunately an old school friend had recently bagged a permission just five minutes from my house. The large field had just been rolled and, although it had been detected in the past, it was perfect after all the wet weather we had recently had. The sun was shining and I turned on the machine and connected another new addition to the 560, Minelab ML60 wireless earbuds (Fig.6). These earbuds are not locked to the 560 and can be used with other compatible Minelab machines that support Bluetooth LE Audio, although Minelab is currently bundling them with the 560 series and Pro-Pack. They come with optional bud sizes to connect if you have small or large ears, but I found the standard ones supplied fitted my ears absolutely fine. Earbuds may divide some detectorists who feel that you have a better sound quality with over-ear headphones, but I was interested to see how they fared.

Detecting Conditions

The conditions were perfect for detecting, with the top layer dry but less than an inch down the soil was moist and easy to dig a nice plug. The Pro-pack comes with two coils, the V12X Double-D coil (12 x 9 inches) and the V8X Double-D coil (8 x 5 inches) (Fig.7). I opted for larger V12X coil based on better ground coverage and hopefully a bit more depth. I didn’t fiddle with the settings and just ran the machine in field mode with the standard discrimination to see how it went. I normally click the horseshoe to get all-metal mode as I like to listen to the iron and have the machine fully open, but stopped myself initially. In the first few hours I unearthed a collection of musket balls of varying sizes in the hours, bits of lead and few indiscriminate pieces of modern trash giving very low VDI’s (I had to dig them). I had a beautiful Minelab ping from the machine, something Minelab I feel do well on good targets. Reading 40-42 on the VDI and showing as around four inches down, I pinpointed the area above the soil. As with most modern Minelab machines the pinpointing function is very accurate – very rarely do I use it, as a wiggle back and forth is usually good for me.

Digging down I pulled out a nice size plug which was high in clay content – it seemed like a lump of medieval fruit cake: heavy, sticky, and determined to remain on the spade I broke it open with my trowel and waved the pieces over the coil. I continued to break the pieces up until just like a Chinese fortune cookie, there it was a hammered silver coin! Ok not the best one I have ever found as it was a little worn and bent, but it’s certainly not the worst, and at the end of the day it’s a hammered coin (Fig.8). I think it is a Richard II silver halfgroat – not a bad find going back over four hundred years for the 560. Would this machine, given time, beat my original Vanquish 540 for hammered coins?

Slipped into my Old Ways

As the day went on, I continued using the machine in the standard field settings with standard discrimination until I slipped into my old ways and hit the horseshoe all metal button later in the afternoon. I was desperate to see how noisy the ground I was detecting on actually was. I was shocked, it was absolutely riddled with iron signals everywhere I had been detecting. The 560 was on 0 iron bias (standard setting) and had done an excellent job of eliminating the iron signals. This changes for Park mode and Beach mode to 2 but for my field detecting it seemed just right. I gave myself a slap on the wrist and turned the all metal horseshoe back off and carried on detecting. I moved more around the edge of the field which proved to bring up more junk than normal, and I did dig some heavy iron a couple of times just to see what the targets were (Fig.9).

I was enjoying the 560 and after moving to the field next door worthier finds continued to appear. An initial ‘reccy’ of the field showed the land here was a lot quieter, with less iron. My friend was already smiling, having found a lead token within a minute with his Minelab Equinox 900. I then saw him digging down again less than a minute later. I had a pleasant ping reading 32 on the VDI and only a couple of inches down. It seemed small as the crossover tones were tight. It turned out to be another nice find for the day, a not too old, possibly Victorian, silver-plated ring which I think would have been for a young child or very small fingered lady (Fig.10). My phone then rang for the third time so I thought I should answer it, turned out to be my wife reminding me we were due out with friends that evening in just half an hour’s time…. Oops! I headed home after a very impressive first day with the Vanquish 560, which still had one bar left on its 10-hour battery life.

ML60 Wireless Earbuds

The ML60 earbuds were growing on me, and they are now my go-to headphones for the 560. I am a lover of the XP WS over-ear headphones, especially in the summer, but having an ultra-lightweight pair of earbuds which synchronised with no problems at all to the machine each time was enjoyable. The sound, when compared to wired headphones, was not quite on a par but only slightly. Also, a note if you have a pair of ML80 or ML85 headphones originally supplied with the Equinox or old Vanquish models, these will not work with the new Vanquish as they use the old aptX wireless system, whereas the new 560 has moved to Bluetooth LE Audio. This is said to provide less delay in audio, better battery life, and improved audio quality. One of the benefits of LE Audio is that it has better compatibility with hearing aids and assistive listening devices. Not being hard of hearing, I couldn’t try this out, but in theory if you have a hearing aid this should be a big benefit.

Further Days Out with the 560

I have taken the 560 out on a variety of mine and friends’ permissions over the past couple of months and even detected in streams and on the beach now that it is totally waterproof. Much as I’d rather not, I did venture out in all weathers with the 560. The rain and mud on one day were so horrendous the 560 ended up looking like the old Minelab Safari machine based on the amount of mud covering it. When the rain stopped, I ended up submersing it in the stream by the field for half an hour whilst I had lunch. Knowing it was waterproof I found it a lot easier to clean the mud off compared to the old model and no water ingress was noted at all the next day whilst drying in my kitchen.

Each time I have gone out, I’ve taken the old 540 with me and compared both machines on depth, target separation and target IDs. The target IDs are naturally different with the 560 being -19 to 99 compared to just -9 to 40 with the old 540, but I did notice that they seemed more stable on the new machine. As for depth, I didn’t notice a major difference with the new machine but did find the audio was picking up very faint small targets better, which must be down to the improved audio.

For those who buy this machine they might probably never have a play with the ferrous volume which is new to the Vanquish range. I naturally did and found my overall choice of ‘2’ which gave me a quiet audible grunt and yet helped me unearth a variety of Roman coins, including a rather poor specimen of a dupondius from a heavily occupied site which is shown in Figs.11a & b. On the same site as I found the Roman coins, I switched to the V8X coil to see how it would separate the good targets in the iron infested ground (Fig.12). for the first few hours out with the V8X coil nothing great came up, but the huge benefit I found was with the small coil, the balance and weight was an absolute pleasure to use for the day. It is a lovely coil and genuinely feels like you have hardly been detecting, even after many hours – so much so it is now my preferred coil on the machine. However, this could be because I found another Charles I hammered with it a week after getting the machine (Figs.13a &b).

The silver did not stop there, as a few days later I had probably the loudest tones come out of the machine when I unearthed a lovely silver denarius of Antoninus Pius (Figs.14a & b). This was again with the V8X coil and a good six inches down in a very flint ridden field. It was one of those targets I spent more time digging than actually detecting, but it was worth it as there is something about denarius which I love, the detail is incredible.

Fig.15 shows the wide array of finds I made on my first few forays with the Vanquish 560 – not bad at all, especially for a machine you can just switch on and go. No complicated sub-menus, just Park, Field, Beach, and a custom profile if you wish to make one. A new user might find the ground balance confusing, but the machine’s default settings were perfect for me in all the programs including beach, but nice to know it’s there if you wish to use it. The machine performed excellently on the beach (Fig.16), with the Beach mode working well on both dry and wet sand. It even managed to pull up a modern silver ring in the first few hours on its first day out, at around six inches under the shingly sand (Fig.17).