AT Pro, Tiger Shark, or Sand Shark?

[jimmyzr1]

Which would be the better water detector. I will use this on Florida and Philippine salt beaches. I also may use in fresh water on occasion.

 

Amazon Forum Fav 👍

Agony and Death on a Gold Rush Steamer: The Disastrous Sinking of the Side-Wheeler Yankee Blade - Grab it through Amazon!

[Daedalus]

Anyone of the three would be a good machine.
I myself would take the Tesoro Sand Shark !
I like Tesoro products and there warranty is the best out .
And the Sand Shark is a PI machine , goes deep and is not bothered by most anything you will run into while detecting .

 

[Buried Crap NJ]

Well if you believe all the post about the AT Pro then that's your machine?
Every know treasure ever lost has been found since it came out. just read all those post out there.
I even think a treasure hunter ask to look for the Oak Island treasure and found it in 1 hour of hunting. Really! They have been looking since 1795 for the Money and the AT Pro found it in 1 hr. WOW!
Now really all three are good machines, my point being read through the post to select a detector. I have read stories of gold coins being found the first day with the At Pro in hunted out parks about a hundred times since it came out. There's a problem with websites that don't allow you to call out and question post!!!!!

 

[Treasure_Hunter]

If your going to be hunting Florida beaches, you might also consider the Excal, there is a lot of tiny pieces of iron on the beaches, the sand shark is a PI, you will be diggin a lot of deep holes for tiny pieces of iron, especially in freh water lakes where it takes for ever for it to rust away

 

[Sandman]

If your going to be hunting Florida beaches, you might also consider the Excal, there is a lot of tiny pieces of iron on the beaches, the sand shark is a PI, you will be diggin a lot of deep holes for tiny pieces of iron, especially in freh water lakes where it takes for ever for it to rust away

Treasure Hunter is right about the Excal being the better of the detectors but also the more expensive. But you get what you pay for. Read my signature at the bottom of this post. The AT Pro hasn't proven itself to even me yet. The PI is out for any fresh water hunting because of the amount time hair pins in fresh water take to rust. All that digging takes away time you could be spent sweeping more ground.

 

[DewGuru]

What you have listed, the Sand Shark is the way to go. Do not get the tiger shark if you plan to hunt in salt water. While it does have a "salt" switch, its subject to falsing and all around bad operation in salt.

The AT Pro, Garrett specifically says that it is not made for salt -- there is a reason for that. Some say it works, some say it does not. Fact is, its a VLF unit, so it is going to be problematic. Tweak this, tweak that, and your still going to have falsing, loss of depth/sensitivity, and erratic behavior. Personally, when I use a machine, I expect it to work at full power without having to sacrifice on anything.

Many people subscribe to the "it cost more so it must be better" theory. Don't be a sucker. The only "best machine" on the market is the one your using at the time you find the treasure you're looking for.

 

[Tony in FL]

I concur with DewGuru - out of those three machines I would go with the Sand Shark. If you look at the Garrett catalogue they have a grid that suggests different usages for all of their machines. It is quite telling that they don't mark the AT Pro as recommended for surf hunting. Sure you CAN use it to hunt in the surf but it was not really made with that purpose in mind. Normally I would throw out a suggestion for the Excal, but you already have two multi-frequency Minelab machines that can be used in dry sand, wet sand, and very shallow water, so at this point adding a PI unit to your arsenal seems like a logical choice.

 

[surfshark]

Ever think about waterproofing your SOV?

 

[jimmyzr1]

Yes, I would definitely consider waterproofing my sovereign but have to get better used to it. I am more familiar with my explorer. I bought them both used and the sounds seem much different on the sovereign than on the explorer. I can tell the gold signals on the explorer much better and all of the targets seem to have the same sounds on the sovereign. Maybe my settings are off on the sovereign. Also, I would need to find out where to get the mods from.

 

[lookindown]

How do you use a Sand Shark on a beach loaded with iron ?

 

[Treasure_Hunter]

How do you use a Sand Shark on a beach loaded with iron ?

I would rather use my Excal and never dig a single piece of iron.....

 

[DewGuru]

How do you use a Sand Shark on a beach loaded with iron ?

Very carefully - I do it on an almost daily basis.

I would rather use my Excal and never dig a single piece of iron.....

If only that were possible. I've used an excal - iron was still found. Have 2 hunting pals who both use excal, both dig iron. Now that manufacturers are going to cheaper materials, those pesky bobby-pins are showing up more and more on those excals.

 

[Sandman]

When you dial in to much sens you will notice the Excals can find iron too just like other detectors, but not as much as PI's. The sounds given off by the Sov Gt and Excal is lots different than the other materials. Time spend digging hair pins is less time spend sweeping for the gold tone.

 

[Smudge]

Of the three, I am going to go with the Sand Shark.

Yes, the Excal is probably the best beach machine out there, but they are also among the most expensive, as Sandman has pointed out.

The AT Pro and the Tiger Shark are both single frequency VLF detectors, which never perform as well as dual/multi frequency detectors or PI detectors. I say this from first hand experience using a many detectors at the beach.

Single frequency detectors like the AT Pro and Tiger Shark are careful not to advertise themselves as designed specifically for wet sand salt water beaches. And thats with good reason. They may perform in those environments, but the depth is less and performance will be compromised.

That leaves you with a PI detector, the Sand Shark.

You have to understand that no PI detector can offer you any real discrimination. Those that claim otherwise are created a marketing debacle. You will dig every single piece of metal on the beach. Everything. Some PI users learn the tones with experience, and get better at passing on junk targets, or so they think.

The benefit to all this is that retrieving targets from the sand is much, much easier than retrieving them from the dirt. One nice long handled sand scoop and you're in business.

Thats my 2 cents. Good luck on your final choice.

 

[lookindown]

I can run my AT PRO on 6 bars sens and it runs stable in the saltwater, in the wash , and in the wet sand. It goes plenty deep enough for me but maybe not for some people. Ive dug no iron.

 

[Tony in FL]

I would rather use my Excal and never dig a single piece of iron.....

If only that were possible. I've used an excal - iron was still found. Have 2 hunting pals who both use excal, both dig iron. Now that manufacturers are going to cheaper materials, those pesky bobby-pins are showing up more and more on those excals.

Sorry Dew, but I am going to have to defend Excalibur. I don't believe the build quality of the Excalibur has an impact on finding bobby pins.



While I do dig iron with my Excal it is most typical when I am either digging an iffy signal (i.e. such as when I suspect a good target could be next to trash) or if I am hunting in all metal mode which of course is similar to hunting with a PI machine. If I hunt with Excalibur in discriminate mode and avoid digging nulls I will recover very little iron compared to when I hunt with a PI machine.

 

[pat-tekker-cat]

I would rather use my Excal and never dig a single piece of iron.....

If only that were possible. I've used an excal - iron was still found. Have 2 hunting pals who both use excal, both dig iron. Now that manufacturers are going to cheaper materials, those pesky bobby-pins are showing up more and more on those excals.

Sorry Dew, but I am going to have to defend Excalibur. I don't believe the build quality of the Excalibur has an impact on finding bobby pins.



While I do dig iron with my Excal it is most typical when I am either digging an iffy signal (i.e. such as when I suspect a good target could be next to trash) or if I am hunting in all metal mode which of course is similar to hunting with a PI machine. If I hunt with Excalibur in discriminate mode and avoid digging nulls I will recover very little iron compared to when I hunt with a PI machine.

Working SE Fl, I have yet to dig a bobby pin with the Excal(Fluffy), going on 3+ yrs, in disc mode. I'm with Tony above. I do dig a few hunks of, I dunno what it was, old ship, building, bridge, ??, ya know. But, no bobby pins. A few cheap hair barretts, but no bobby pins. Maybe it's something in the water down here ! LOL! Sand-shark for back-up.

 

[firstbiggestmost]

Personally, I’d rather hear the broken/double tone of the Bobbie pin and then the nice solid tone of the piece of gold or silver that might be right next to it. The Excall requires you to cover and recover the same area from many different angles to try and over come the effects of Iron nulling. Or you can hunt in reverse which still requires extra time…finding the target…switching to.. disc.. maybe scraping sand cause disc loses depth…maybe losing the target due to unwanted nulling.. maybe after all that finally deciding to dig.

With the Shark I can hear all the targets and use my ears to separate the good from the bad, and with a nice scoop I can process the targets I chose to dig quickly.

Recovery Speed Test of Minelab Sovereign/Excall….Notice the size of the “blind spot” created by the iron null.
The good part starts at 2:03 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odhpMMNfslQ

[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odhpMMNfslQ[/youtube]

 

[Treasure_Hunter]

Here is what I know......I can sweep a gold ring with a nail through it and get a null from one direction, and immediately sweep it from a 90 degree angle and get a solid gold tone.

While hunting one day at the beach I got a null, when I did a re-sweep from a 90 degree angle I got a gold tone, when I dug the target up I found a piece of iron about the size of a pencil eraser and a gold wedding band....

I would rather sweep a null target 2-3 times over a span of 5-10 seconds to know it is iron, than waste 1-15 minutes of time and energy digging up a bobby pin or other piece of iron.......

 

[GibH]

Another

"Tastes Great"
"Less Filling"

thread