Safari Weight/Swing Speed/Armrest

[CoilFisher]

I got some opinions here regarding the Minelab Safari from head to head comparisons.
Is it really that heavy?
Do you really need to swing it slow to get the signal?
And, is the upper armrest durable?

 

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[DeArmitt Pa]

Both my father-in-law and I use the E-Trac with Inline probe on it. Niether of us find it heavy and we have had 8 hours of swinging in one day. They are heavier than Fishers, a little heavier than Whites. One thing to keep in mind is that the longer you have that lower shaft, the further you have it out in front of you, the more it tires your arm out. I think thats were most make their mistake. I don't even use my arm strap on my arm rest. The arm rests are the same on the E-Trac and Safari, the weight is the same, and the speed is the same.

The swing speed takes practice. Compared to a Whites or Fisher, you do swing a Minelab slow. But you do not need to go ridiculasly slow. There are two positives for the slower swing speed. If in trashy areas, this helps shoot down between the trash. So a Whites or Fisher can miss targets due to the faster sweep speed. The faster swing will miss more targets in trash areas simply beacause its too fast to identify targets.

We have not experienced any problems with our arm rests. Or any one who has bought a detector from us either. Personally, I think they could be better, but those who have had problems might have had a flaw in the rest or possibly just too much abuse on it. I definately use my detector but because of the cost I always keep in mind to baby it too, so I think with some care it will last.

John DeArmitt
Fort Bedford Metal Detectors

 

[George (MN)]

The Safari weighs 5.5 lbs including the 8 AAs. If this is a problem, one can spend $37.95 for the Swingy Thingy (bungee harness) which is supposed to make the detector feel nearly weightless.

I would not expect anything to break off in *normal* use, but don't know enough to give them a relative rating in various accidents.

You can sweep it fast in lower trash areas, but in higher trash areas, like with most detectors, the speed of the human brain in deciding to dig or not *may* be the main determinate of sweep speed (sometimes not true).

FWIW, one of the top Explorer experts has switched to Teknetics G2 & says it gets goodies with stock 11" DD coil that Explorer couldn't see, even with 5" coil.
Yes, it is way too stressful to pick one detector over all others & feel 100% sure the right choice was made. If there was 1 best choice for all, only 1 detector would be made.

A great many detectors have almost equal results & users at least as likely as dealers or mfrs to exaggerate differences.

At this point I feel more like using my AT Pro than my Safari, but I haven't put the Safari through all the tests yet. I can tell you the AT Pro correctly gave high tone on dime in air test at 11", but the Safari mostly gave low to mid tones at that distance. The AT Pro found me a dime down 7" correct high tone & correct visual ID 80-85. Many excellent detectors. Best wishes, George (MN)