Excalibur 1000 verses Excalibur II 1000

[Sir Gala Clad]

Excalibur 1000 verses Excalibur II 1000 which is the better factory stock detector for beach hunting (shallow water, wet sand, dry sand) and why".

Excalibur 1000 verses Excalibur II 1000 which is the better model detector to modify and why?

Do the most popular modifications:add waterproof connectors to support different head phones, add water proof connectors to support different coils sizes, add remote pin point switch, take away some of the advantages of one model over another?

 

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[bigscoop]

Ive thrown my Xcal II in the closet and use my BLUEs. There maybe a tolerance thats supposed to be met.... but i think Ireland did it better. My blues seem a bit more sensitive to smaller targets and have hardly no chatter like my Xcal II. The Xcal II seems a little deeper... but boy if that coil floats and GB is lost it loves to chatter. The Xcal II has required a lot more repairs for me as well and some of the people i know using them. BUT.... that said there isnt going to be any machine thats put in the harsh salt water condition and not ever need repairs.

I dont believe anyone thats used Joes mods would ever go back to a stock Xcal. His skullies are top notch and if you choose you can use the GGAs. Most people dont hunt in PP because they hate using the switch... and it fails.... not with his switch. His headphone mod has save us money and we got a much better set of headphones. If he does the coil swaps like hes working on that should put a little more money in our pockets and improve performance. Headphones and the right coil in certain conditions can make a heck of a difference out there.

Dew, you just said a mouthful about the ground balance being lost. This is the biggest issue I encounter in that really turbulent water, makes using much of anything over the 8" coil far too unstable a great deal of the time. By the time you dial these larger coils back so they'll remain somewhat stable out there in the deeper stuff all of the potential gain of the larger coils has pretty much been sacrificed. Not so bad in the waist deep and/or calmer stuff and I'll still use them whenever I can get away with it, but if not, I simply swap out the coils to something smaller.

 

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[dewcon4414]

A short coming of the Blue that you need to address is the Battery pack. They are 700 NiCADs where the Xcal II is 1000 Nims.

 

[bigscoop]

A short coming of the Blue that you need to address is the Battery pack. They are 700 NiCADs where the Xcal II is 1000 Nims.

I don't even mess with rechargeable packs anymore. All AA here and below 11.45 they all get replaced. The nice thing about AAA's is that I always know what I have and what I have left, never require a charging source and no unexpected battery failures.

 

[Treasure_Hunter]

Mine are AA batteries

 

[OBN]

Thanks Dew, We have to do what ever we can to stay a head of the next hunter. I was out today after bertha and had the 10 inch...needless to same I came across a area loaded with targets, maybe 20 by 20ft...the Excalibur was next to useless cause iron was mixed in....in PP I could hear deep faints and shallows almost on top of each other...and this is the wetsand slopes into the water. So now I may work in a way to carry the little 5 or even the 7.25 coil...maybe a empty camel back?

I had a friend PM me tonight said he seen me working that area, said he came thru after I left and he dug a mid with his CZ21 8, and got 3 targets in one scoop...quarter, piece iron and a zipper pull...had to be gold in there!!

 

[bigscoop]

Mine are AA batteries

Ooops.....my bad. Fixed that.

 

[Treasure_Hunter]

Ooops.....my bad. Fixed that.

Just making sure there wasn't a change I wasn't aware of...

 

[bigscoop]

Just making sure there wasn't a change I wasn't aware of...

I understand entirely. You know me. You know how small I am.

 

[Treasure_Hunter]

I understand entirely. You know me. You know how small I am.

You'd not small, just compact, built for speed my friend....

 

[bigscoop]

You'd not small, just compact, built for speed my friend....

In high school my football coach nicknamed me, Vapor.

 

[penzfan]

I was out today after bertha and had the 10 inch...needless to same I came across a area loaded with targets, maybe 20 by 20ft...the Excalibur was next to useless cause iron was mixed in....

OBN, Are you saying the Excal will not discriminate the iron or will not null if there are good targets mixed with the iron? Thanks for responding as I am considering purchasing an Excal to go with my SovGT...

 

[lost items recovery]

More probable that the good targets wouldn't be detected very well due to all the nulling taking place or if in pinpoint mode digging all that iron may cause someone to give up and walk away. That's if the junk was iron and not aluminum also Sent from my iPhone using TreasureNet

 

[Sir Gala Clad]

[Penzfan: The Excal would be a good choice as you can detect in deeper water as well as dive with it. Plus you do not have to worry about salt mist or getting it wet when it rains. As the Excalibur is based on earlier Sovereign technology which was optimized for diving (dumbed down) and ruggedized for diving.

When hunting in the discrimination mode with either the Sovereign or the Excalibur you will get a null and it takes time for the processor to recover before it can discriminate another target. You must slooooow dooooown where there is a lot of iron so that your detector can recover.

As tbe 10 inch (large field) coil sees twice as much surface area than the 8 inch (small field coil), actually 7.5 inch it is more affected by iron.

This is true for the Sovereign GT as well as for the Excalibur, " Nothing has Changed".
This it true on land as well as in water.

QUOTE=penzfan;4132327]OBN, Are you saying the Excal will not discriminate the iron or will not null if there are good targets mixed with the iron? Thanks for responding as I am considering purchasing an Excal to go with my SovGT...[/QUOTE]

 

[dewcon4414]

OBN like me normally hunts in PP with his PP switch so id say hes just saying there was a ton of targets to close together. Unlike the Sov the Xcal doesnt have the IM off switch so its supposed to process the good targets first .... thats why you get some beeps on near targets. Unlike disc the machine only has to ID a target so since there is no processing.... you dont have the long null, you can hear near targets.

 

[penzfan]

Thanks to all for the responses...

 

[Sir Gala Clad]

Too Soon!
Keep the answer(s) coming, include the Sovereign as well
Dewcons input on the IM switch is a real eye opener to me on the advantage that the Sovereign has over the Excalibur.

I am glad that Penzfan got the information he needed, however there is much more valuable information out there so please keep it coming.

As an update, to this thread, which I started, and encourage further reply(s), I will be modifying my stock Excalibur ll 1000, the next time it needs repair, since it will no longer be under warranty (free at last).

It turned out to be a no brainer for me as I was able to purchase a once used Excalibur ll, under warranty at a good price from a T Net Member. This greatly simplifies life for me as I will be able to interchange components, such as the battery pod between the modified and stock green machines. Later, I will be able to interchange all components after the same modifications are made to the newly purchased Excalibur.

This is not to knock old blue, which I would really would of liked to own, but never could buy one at an affordable price. And who wouldn't like to get their hands on a sword, if only to hang in the den, unless one is able to find the parts (sigh).

The mods that I am most interested in are the endcap with the CTX 3030 connector for underwater headphones and the endcap which allows changing coil sizes - so I optimize each modified detector for beach conditions.

I do not expect the remote switch to be as beneficial for me as I primarily hunt in discrimination mode since I detect deeper targets in discrimination than in pinpoint.t. However, this most likely will change with improved headphones, such as Grey Ghost Amphibians?

Thanks to all for the responses...

 

[bigscoop]

Think of it this way......our stock machine is already hunting much deeper then we realize, but these returns being too weak to trigger a response in disc and the stock headphones not sealing out enough noise to allow us to hear those very faint chirps or threshold disruptions. If we can't create stronger sends and returns then we at least need to boost these faint responses and disruptions (returns) that we're already getting but can't hear. "Good headphones" don't boost these returns but they can allow you to hear them.

Also consider this....it's possible, that while in disc mode, you could experience a brief null that isn't really a null at all, just a very faint, quick, threshold break, or a return that was just too weak to trigger a tone response. I've had this happen on more then one occasion. Switch to PP and only get a little threshold quiver, but repeatable. "Dig!" With stock headphones you're likely to never hear these responses.

 

[bigscoop]

Today was actually a prime example of weak/faint responses. I got right "in" the waterline today and I just slowly progressed along in a parallel line with the 12 x 15" SEF until the monsoon and lightening ran me off the beach. So I hunted about an hour. "Every" response I got today was very faint except for the car because everything was deep-deep. Without good headphones I can tell you straight up that I would have missed hearing the chain, nickel, and silver band for sure. No doubt about it. But it was nice to finally get out, if only for an hour.

 

[lost items recovery]

Good info Bigscoop, love posts like this! Thanks for posting. My excal 1000 and I still are not one. Sometimes I bet my machine is like "come on man! Your not listening to me!"

Sent from my iPhone using TreasureNet

 

[bigscoop]

Good info Bigscoop, love posts like this! Thanks for posting. My excal 1000 and I still are not one. Sometimes I bet my machine is like "come on man! Your not listening to me!"

Sent from my iPhone using TreasureNet

I was in disc when I hit the first big earring, just a chirp but repeatable. I did a bit of a circle around that hole and got a narrow null, switched to PP and got a little/tight repeatable tick, took off some sand and started getting chirps in disc, sure enough the second earring. About 6-8 feet below this I hit the chain in disc, very faint but only in one direction and not all the time. PP had a hard time with it as well but always a repeatable response of some type, i.e., little tick, a threshold break, all very weak responses and I have the volume cranked up pretty good. The chain is stainless, which also explains some of the issue.