Headphones for metal detectors
Most metal detecting units which are made for relic hunters, even the ones which were used during the World War II for mine sweeping purposes, were outfitted with a headphone jack. Some relic hunters are swearing that they would not be able to detect anything, if they did not use headphones, but others say that headphones are a security risk and sometimes make you a virtual recluse when you go on detecting for some eight hours and not hear a single thing, but the buzzing of the coils.
The reason why most of the relic hunters use headphones and not the usually built in speaker is that they do not want to disturb other people in the vicinity. The constant noise would very often disturb people, who are in such places where relic hunting makes sense, looking to relax and unwind, taking all the fun out of the metal detection. Other treasure hunters swear that they need the headphones in order to hear the faint signals of deeper buried artifacts, which they would not be able to hear with the built in speaker.
Nevertheless, people who did wear headphones very often have bad experiences with the fact that they are virtually hearing none of the outer world. Experiences were reported, where perverts were actually trying to molest or flashers did flash the stunned relic hunter, to the fact that some people were unable to hear wolves approaching and were seriously hurt by them. As a consequence, the relic hunting communities have established a new standard, where one ear handle is being kept off ear, to keep the contact with reality and awareness of the possible approaching of danger. During daytime, in public, both ears can be covered by the phones and thus a more accurate and effective work can be done, but in other conditions, at night, in areas where there are barely other people around, taking one off does the trick.
The quality of the headphones varies wildly as well. Treasure hunters and manufacturers alike have stated that working with a higher quality model, which is featuring good dynamic response and a broad frequency spectrum, may provide for better results when working with headphones. Being that only a small spectrum of the frequency range is being addressed by the machine, low quality headphones may suffice. But all of the people involved in this community are in accord, that metal detector headphones need to have an independent volume control, if possible for every ear a separate one, because most of the treasure hunting metal detectors do not have a volume knob.
