Bounty Hunter Quick Silver Metal Detector Review

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Is the Quick Silver a metal detector for a kid?

Is it any good for the amateur hobbyist?

As a budget metal detector in the entry-level market, the Quick Silver from Bounty Hunter holds its own with a digital target ID display.

This feature is hard to come by in this price range, so if you want more information plus another perk or two that comes with its price tag, you may want to grab a hold of it and give it a thorough examination.

Who is the Bounty Hunter Quick Silver Best Suited to?

The Quick Silver is a budget metal detector that is priced for the entry-level market. It’s a little heavy for young kids, so older kids and adults new to metal detecting will find more use for it.

It’s priced under $100, so it’s an attractive buy to those who don’t want to shell out a lot of money upfront. However, it doesn’t come with any accessories save for the 8” searchcoil. So, you will have to budget more for headphones, digging tools, and a carry case.

More advanced users or those who have been using metal detectors for over a year will find no use for this inexpensive Bounty Hunter metal detector. Good for the amateur with some use under his belt? No. Good for the brand-new rookie? Yeah.

How Does the Bounty Hunter Quick Silver Perform?

For the price, the Quick Silver offers the usual fixings of an inexpensive detector with its preset ground balance and some level of discrimination. In its favor, it does have a headphone jack, digital target ID display, and three tones to discern between target metals.

Even though the tones are distinct and clear, without the ability to fine-tune between the metal types and tones, you can mistake good items for bad ones if you’re only relying on the limited information the Quick Silver provides. The golden rule with a cheap detector? Dig it all.

Features & Benefits

Digital Target ID

The digital display is a nice upgrade to see in this budget metal detector, but it still does not display a numerical target ID scale as this feature would put you into the next price range.

However, the digital target ID gives you more information with each detector find. It displays four discrimination segments organized into Iron, AL ZN, AL 5c, and Coins.

AL ZN includes zinc coins like pennies made post 1982, old pull tabs, large foil pieces, screw caps, and many small gold rings. AL 5c includes larger gold jewelry, new pull tabs, large aluminum pieces, and nickels. Coins mode will detect dimes, quarters, copper pennies, and more.

As you can see, too much discrimination can actually cause you to pass over very good targets as they may have a similar ID to many junk items. The best way to discriminate is to dig it all.

You will also be able to see what metal types you have rejected as it will be indicated with an “x” on the display. 

Visual Depth Graph

This may be a confusing feature for some users because it’s assumed that this is a target depth indicator. Sorry to burst your bubble, but it is not. What it really is, is a depth-select detection level. In other words, this is how you will adjust sensitivity.

You have a 3-segment graph with shallow, medium, and deep. When all the segments are filled in, you are working at maximum sensitivity.

There will be times when you need to reduce sensitivity for reasons other than ground minerals or EMI interference. This type of circumstance could be when working in trashy areas. You may suspect that deeply buried targets may be interfering with signals on a shallow target. Reduce sensitivity to shallow so that you can detect the shallow buried target.

As far as estimating the depth of a buried target, the display does not provide this information. You can use pinpointing techniques to estimate its approximate depth. For example, sweep over a detected target. With each sweep, raise the coil 1” higher until a signal is no longer achieved. This can provide you with a very crude estimation of target depth.

Discrimination

With four segments visible on the display, you have three segments that can be notched out. To discriminate a target is to eliminate it from detection. When you eliminate a metal segment, an X will appear on the display under the rejected metal type.

In this case, you can eliminate Iron, AL ZN, and AL 5c. You cannot eliminate Coins. When you press the Reject Target button four times, you will remove discrimination to allow detection of all metal types. Essentially, you’re back in all-metal mode.

3-Tone Audio

Surprisingly for a cheap metal detector, you not only more than one tone, you have three! So, this metal detector provides both visual identification and audio identification of a detected metal.

You have low, medium, and high tones. It’s a very crude system as in this case, a low tone doesn’t always mean an iron or junk target.

For example. Low tones are associated with iron, bottle caps, and small gold jewelry like earrings. Medium tones are associated with pull tabs, zinc pennies, nickels, and large gold jewelry like rings. High tones will be associated with silver, copper, and brass coins.

Headphone Jack

You may not have volume control on this metal detector, but you do have a headphone jack. The headphone jack is ¼” size, so it can be used with wired headphones with ¼” plug but an adapter can easily hook up 1/8” headphones to the detector.

Unfortunately, no headphones are included in this package. When you do shop for headphones, be sure to choose one with volume control so that you can adjust for this feature while hunting.

Limitations

Heavy

Out of the few things I can think of that may have you thinking twice about the Quick Silver, the one that draws the most attention is the weight. The Quick Silver is no lightweight tool as it weighs in at 4 lbs.

This is significantly heavier than most other metal detectors in this price range that come in around 2 lbs. While older children may be able to use the detector for a while, younger children will struggle with the weight.

For the features that this entry-level model lacks, the additional weight does come in as a questioning feature.

Popular Questions

Can the Quick Silver Metal Detector be used for Pinpointing?

You can use the 8” searchcoil for pinpointing, but this takes an experienced hand to nail it down. With good practice, it can be accurate to within an inch of a target’s location, but a separate pinpointer may be helpful for beginners.

Will the Bounty Hunter Metal Detector Detect Gold?

The operating frequency of the Quick Silver is 6.8 kHz. It’s not a gold prospecting frequency, and so it would not be good for trying to detect gold nuggets.

However, you can find gold jewelry with the Quick Silver. It’s best not to discriminate as small gold jewelry will often sound like iron and pull-tab items on this detector.

Can the Bounty Hunter Quick Silver be Used Underwater?

While the searchcoil is submersible, the control box is not. It is not designed for underwater detecting. It can be used in shallow water but is it vital that water does not get into the control box. This can destroy the electronics and void the warranty.

Does the Bounty Hunter Come with Batteries?

The Bounty Hunter Quick Silver Metal Detector does not come with batteries. You will need to purchase 2x 9V batteries separately. They will provide approximately 16 hours of operation depending on the battery brand and use of headphones.

Only alkaline batteries can be used with the metal detector – no rechargeable batteries.

The low battery indicator light will turn if you need to replace the batteries and you may hear erratic beeping associated with it.

Conclusion

You don’t have to spend a small fortune to get started into metal detecting. But, if you want a decent machine that offers some digital advantage from the entry-level market that is crowded with analog models, the Quick Silver detector delivers it.

There’s not a lot of compromises with this Bounty Hunter metal detector. It has more tones than most basic models, and you can still discriminate and adjust sensitivity as the terrain calls for it. With headphones plugged in, you can get detecting and digging without distraction.

Further Reading:

• Fisher CZ-21 Metal Detector Review (10.5 inch Coil)
• Aquascan Aquapulse AQ1B Metal Detector Review
• Minelab GPZ 7000 Metal Detector Review
• Minelab SDC 2300 Metal Detector Review
• Minelab Excalibur II Metal Detector Review

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