What was your first detector?

[schlepprock]

In 1979 my dad bought my brother and me a White's Coin Getter which cost sixty dollars new. It was an all metal detector with just one knob (sensitivity), but even as cheap as it was it went fairly deep. I found quite a few silver coins with it, and I found my first and only Morgan dollar with it as well. I still have it but time has took it's toll on it and it only goes down about an inch or so now.

Schlepp.

 

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[mrs.oroblanco]

My first detector was a old relic White's, handed down to me by my Uncle. He and my other Uncle (Al) were the first two people in Connecticut and Mass. to help the police with detecting underwater, for bodies. He was also one of White's first dealers in the area.

He's the guy who got me hooked. He also made the first sand-scoop (the first long-handled sand-scoop that you could buy) - and I still own the prototype. (he willed it to me when he passed away). When our house burned down in 1989, the detector was in the house, and burned up, but the scoop was in the shop - so I still have it.

B

 

[extractor]

MXT

 

[trulyers]

In 1962, I built a BFO metal detector of my own design in high school electronics. My instructor entered it in the California State Fair and it won the blue ribbon that year. It just pitted two oscillators against each other, with one being controlled by the operator and the coil of the other being at the end of a broomstick. The judges said "it looks crappy but it works good." It would detect a quarter at about 4".

I found a silver nugget with it, near an old smelter in the gold country of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, near Mokelumne Hill. After that, I built another, much simpler one, which pitted the single coil's oscillator aganst a six transistor radio station, for the bfo works. You listened to that squeal on the radio as you searched. It also worked very well, and I found many coins with it in my mom's front yard. That yard eventually yielded up over 100 coins, to my various detectors.

I could not keep up with the newer models coming out, so I finally had to start buying top-of-the-line models as they came out. I had Whites, Big Bud Pro, Technetics, Gold Mountain, Compass X-100, Garrett's, and Garrett's GTI 2500, a fantastic machine that all but eliminates digging up any trash at all!

The Gold Mountain machine was a big step down from my Technetics with no ID-ing capability at all. But after work and evenings and weekends, I found 750 coins within my first 30 days with it.

No one had ever searched the grassy parking strips (only about 1 1/2 feet wide) along our sidewalks before. They were full of coins, from a 1900 Indian Head at a half inch on up to mercury dimes and war nickles, silver quarters, and rings too. The neighborhood only started being built up in the late 1930's. All of those 750 coins were within only two blocks of my home, in one month, with a non-ID detector.

 

[rjnail]

White's 6db back in 1980