Newbie needs detector advice

[RedSpey]

My wife and I want to start relic hunting in North Central Washington state. It's mostly rocky soil. We have a budget of $400 to spend on a detector and whatever else we may need. Any suggestions on what we should look for in a detector? Any recommendations on a detector?

Thanks for your help. We hope to have a lot of fun together searching the old homestead and mining sites around here.

RedSpey

 

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[omnicognic]

From what I have heard and read, the Garrett Ace 250 is a lot of bang for the buck. I have not heard anything bad about it here is a link to kellyco about it:

http://www.kellycodetectors.com/garrett/ace250.htm
Good luck Happy hunting! omnicognic 8)

 

[bakergeol]

For a Mid-range relic detector I recommend? Tesoro's latest offering the Vaquero at $420. It has the depth to rival that of a high end machine. This new machine is very popular with Civil War relic hunters. I would have recommended the Tesoro Cibola at $340 but you are from Washington which I believe has a lot of mineralized ground(need manual ground balance). Check out the user reviews on the Tesoro forums. The Vaquero also has the high frequency necessary for gold nugget hunting(I know of only 5 machines which have this coin/relic/nugget hunting ability and the Vaquero is one of them)
By the way a lot of good used detectors on the forums.


George

 

[Orygun]

I have a Tesoro Eldorado and live in south eastern oregon and it is an awesome relic machine! you can get a new one in the sub $400 range with enough left over to buy a few extras!