Recently I decided to send in my 3 sets of Sun Ray Gold Pro Headphones to get them rebuilt with new ear cups and repair one that was broken last season. Let me say to start with there are several quality brands of headphones on the market and personal preference is just that. When I first started being serious about detecting I purchase the Sun Ray’s from Gerry’s Metal Detectors. Since that time Gerry has added the Killer Bee’s line to the ones he sells. They are made by the same mfg. and come in a nice variety of choices. All are excellent!

Now why I decided to write about headphones. In working in the desert detecting for gold I use headphones almost all the time. There is an occasion that I would use speakers for my GPX 5000 on very hot days and if I am in a spot that I am really concerned about needing to hear external sounds but this is rare. The reasons you need a very high quality set of headphones is comfort in the fit and being able to block out external noise and especially wind. When I am hunting I want ALL my concentration on what I am hearing and not listening to the coil scraping the ground.

When coin hunting I know a lot of people hardly ever use headphones because they think they don’t need them. Well, in my opinion that is just fine with me because most (not all) detectorist will miss targets when they think they can hear but really are not. That brings me to my point, when I sent in all my headphones I figured I would go without and just use the machine speaker. (Remember I generally always hunt with headphones period) I went out to a yard here in town and began swinging. It did not take long and realize this was a mistake. I had to stop and wait for every vehicle that went by so I could be listening for the deep faint targets. That was a pain and to time consuming so I did have some (good headphones) but not the quality of the ones I use. I went and got them from my truck and it was at that time I remembered why I bought high quality headphones. The sound quality was not there, the noise was not blocked out and they were anything but a comfortable seal and fit on my ears. A very high quality set of headphones is an investment but in my opinion a must if you want to be a very successful detectorist. It is not the only thing to becoming successful but it is on the list.