About to buy one of three

[wglace]

Ok the new knee is healing well and Doc says OK to get in the surf, play golf whatever. We moved to Fl west coast last Aug. I plan beach and shallow water hunting 95% of the time.

I'm set to buy my first MD and looking at Tesoro Tiger Shark or an Excal II or a CZ.
I'm leaning toward the Shark for these reasons:

Lifetime Warranty
Less complicated (I'll probably dig everything anyway)
Less expensive can buy all accessories and still be under Excal or CZ price
I like being able to change coils if I want
Like being able to locate control box in different location on shaft or hip

What an I missing? Your feed back is appreciated.

 

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[lost items recovery]

Tiger shark is for fresh water, sand shark is for salt water

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[gamiller]

the sand shark,excal, and cz 21 are all hardwired.

 

[metalhealth]

its easy to assume youll dig everything until you hunt with a detector like an excal or CZ on a beach where you get 10 nulls for every good signal and realize you would have spent at least 3/4 of your time digging iron garbage. bobbie pins, hair clips, and sparkler wires get really frustrating and tiresome really quick.

 

[lost items recovery]

its easy to assume youll dig everything until you hunt with a detector like an excal or CZ on a beach where you get 10 nulls for every good signal and realize you would have spent at least 3/4 of your time digging iron garbage. bobbie pins, hair clips, and sparkler wires get really frustrating and tiresome really quick.

Well said!

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[sponge]

If you can afford the excal get it. Alot of beach hunters pn here use it. Myself, I run the sandshark. If you have any questions about the shark feel free to ask. I have used one for 2 years now and it still finds everything I put the coil over. Everything.

 

[RustyGold]

Out of those three I recommend the Excalibur mounted to a straight carbon fiber shaft!
Smooth and deep!

 

[Fletch88]

I've got an 8" CZ-21 I'm thinking of selling. Used once since July 2014 when purchased

 

[Thead]

Fletch88 - seems like you are selling everything you have!

 

[Fletch88]

Yes I've kind of got into a bad 2 mortgage situation.

 

[Sir Gala Clad]

its easy to assume youll dig everything until you hunt with a detector like an excal or CZ on a beach where you get 10 nulls for every good signal and realize you would have spent at least 3/4 of your time digging iron garbage. bobbie pins, hair clips, and sparkler wires get really frustrating and tiresome really quick.

The amount of nulls you get will depend on the type of trash where you are detecting.
If the trash is aluminum or iron with alloys, you will get tones, and will have to dig.
Carved rings (irregular shaped) and rings with stones often sound like bottle caps.
Then there is nothing like the sweet sound of screw on wine bottle caps, to get your heart pounding.

If you know there is gold, you may have to remove all the above trash anyway to be able to hear the whisper signal,
which is almost impossible to hear after a shallow target blasts your ears.

If you dig the nulls, which I often do on a very clean beach out of boredom, you will find some of those nulls to be deep targets that the discriminator cannot determine. Many times you will get a tone for a conductive target which becomes a null when the discriminator cannot lock on to verify the target. This often occurs in the water at the end of your sweep, the detector lets you know there is something near your search coil, but later nulls when it cannot lock on.

A better metric, may be the ratio of pull tabs recovered to rings, or clad coins to silver.

In my opinion, the benefit of not having to dig trash is way overstated.
Experienced pulse hunters do a pretty good job of determining what the target is without discrimination.
Plus all you have to do is go the where there is less trash, like further out in the water where the depth capability of
multifrequency detectors drop off.

 

[metalhealth]

If you can afford the excal get it. Alot of beach hunters pn here use it. Myself, I run the sandshark. If you have any questions about the shark feel free to ask. I have used one for 2 years now and it still finds everything I put the coil over. Everything.

Yes. I dont want to put down PI detectors. They certainly have their place. Its really a matter of your style. Im relatively young, but for the places I hunt, I just dont have the stamina (mental mostly) to use a PI. Yesterday at the lake I probably dug 40 pull tabs. I found 2 tungsten rings, a stainless bracelet, and a silver earring but I was ready to quit with the amount of trash in the area after about 3 and a half hours. I cant begin to count the number of nulls I skipped over. If I had been using a PI, Im sure I would have quit after the first hour because I would have been so frustrated. Unfortunately, in this lake and in a lot of places, the good targets are where the people gather, which is also where most of the garbage is. I recently went to Hilton Head Island. The beach is super clean there. Sometimes I swung 15 mins or more just to get a null. In a place like that, I could stand to dig every signal. But for me, there just arent many places like that.

 

[dewcon4414]

Bum knee and a PI might not mix. With a VLF you never have to wonder is this a beach ill be able to hunt without killing myself. A PI is a nitch machine to me unless you intend to patiently work an area when conditions are right. Recent drop time isnt a time for a PI here in Fl and when you start getting cuts and the targets start showing up..... you will find there are a lot more bad than good ones in the ditch. As a winter machine.... it can have its advantages out there. BOTH the CZ and Xcal are simple machines to use.......... now you may well have us on expense/repair costs. However, the VLFs get an awfully lot of gold to of set repairs and initial costs. Most of us have more than one machine as well. I believe you will recover your costs faster with a VLF.... the get you a used SS as a back up.

Dew

 

[Auriemma]

If you don't plan on dunking the control box, a Sovereign (any model) will sweep the beach quite well.

 

[wvdirtdigger]

I've owned the shark and the excal. I found gold and silver with the shark. I bought an excal this last year. I picked up 16 rings with it. Really liked not digging a ton of iron. But get what you can afford. Both machines will produce!!

 

[wglace]

Thanks for all the input. I'm going to drive over to Kellyco and get "hands on" each machine. I'm also thinking the Excal may be the way to go. Discrimination seems to mean a lot to experienced MDers.

 

[gamiller]

Thanks for all the input. I'm going to drive over to Kellyco and get "hands on" each machine. I'm also thinking the Excal may be the way to go. Discrimination seems to mean a lot to experienced MDers.

Received an email 20% off on black Friday in store only , fwiw

 

[gamiller]

keep in mind that you have to modify the excel to make it useable, the factory shaft is not well balanced, most hunter buy or make a straight shaft for balance and comfort.

 

[gamiller]

bfstore2014 was the code they sent in their email.

 

[gravediggermax-vabeachva]

its easy to assume youll dig everything until you hunt with a detector like an excal or CZ on a beach where you get 10 nulls for every good signal and realize you would have spent at least 3/4 of your time digging iron garbage. bobbie pins, hair clips, and sparkler wires get really frustrating and tiresome really quick.

.
.
exactly