Best Metal Detector for Scuba Diving???

[sparkgirl]

Not sure where to post this, but I'm getting my PADI open water scuba cert...just wondering if anyone has any experience diving with detectors? Right now Minelab Excalibur is on the top of my list, but also looking at Garrett Infinium LS and White's Surfmaster PI.

 

[Un-shore]

I'm going to subscribe to this thread because I have the same question.

Are you talking about saltwater, fresh or both?

 

[sparkgirl]

Both really...I have an AT Pro but I can't take it very deep...I'll be diving in lakes and ocean mostly

 

[Fletch88]

I've been Naui certified since 89' but only started scuba detecting a couple years ago. The Excalibur on a dive shaft is awesome. I have a 10" coil but would rather have the 8" for maneuverability. I've have dove with a PI machine in freshwater and got tired of digging tiny bits of iron. The Excal is excellent in fresh and salt water at knocking out trash and iron. Pulltabs are a given though if you want to find gold! I would log several many hours of diving before even attempting to detect and dive. Like I said ive been diving since 89' and the first time I tried detecting and diving it was a challenge to get accustomed to everything. Good luck with your endeavor, I think it's very cool that you dive and metal detect!

 

[Tom_in_CA]

Fletch has a good answer so far. Pulse's are great. Easy to use. Great sounds. Great depth. Great sensitivity. Etc... However, they have no way to knock out iron

And I'll throw out another plus for the excalibur: The fact that it's not silent search, like the Fisher underwater CZ, is a benefit to scuba. Because as you will soon learn in your scuba trips: the underwater world is noisy! All the bubbles of the mask and breather apparatus create a lot of noise. And this where the excalibur has one good factor: that long bbeeeooonnggg (with the tail) can not be missed As opposed to the fisher's underwater silent search quick fast beeps, leave you always wondering, holding your breath (a scuba no-no) to hear the signals.

On regular beach hunting, I never cared much for that annoying long "tail" of the signals on the excal. But with scuba, I found that drawn out signal to be helpful, so that I wasn't left perpetualy wondering if I'd missed a beep

 

[cudamark]

I agree with Fletch and Tom, the Excalibur is the way to go for the reasons given. Now if you're hunting a junk free wreck site, just about any good PI machine will work great. You can add JW Fishers to the list. They make a nice professional grade dive detector too.

 

[OBN]

Minelab Excalibur or the Fisher CZ21..........my buddy Chuck, not diving but under. With either if you use in saltwater make sure to rinse with fresh water and use McNett silicon spray every few weeks to preserve the cables and o rings.

 

[Tom Slick]

The Tesoro Tiger Shark is a great Scuba detector rated to 200 feet. It's a VLF so it has discrimination. For a PI, Tesoro has the Sand Shark also rated to 200 feet. The two detectors don't have the overall performance of the excal but you can get both of them for about what an Excal costs. Lifetime warranty on the Tesoros.

 

[Un-shore]

So, a PI does not discriminate between iron and gold?

 

[Tom_in_CA]

So, a PI does not discriminate between iron and gold?

Correct. A PI can not tell you conductive (gold) versus non conductive (iron). About the best you can do is "second guess" sounds, on a case-by-case basis. Ie.: elongated nails (for example) might give a double beep. But the minute the nail is bent though, you can kiss that concept goodbye.

 

[sparkgirl]

So it looks like the Excalibur wins...I figured as much...lol...no offense to the Tesoro, but I will NOT take a VLF machine anywhere near the ocean ever again. Even when ground balancing and reducing sensitivity on my ATP, it sucked so bad in the wet sand and salt water that it sucked all the fun out of detecting...pinpointer wasn't any better. So I'll take a PI any day...my only concern was that Excalibur uses BBS, and I'm not very familiar with how that compares to PI

 

[cudamark]

BBS doesn't rely on just one or two frequencies. It uses 17. An AT Pro is a single frequency VLF. That's why it's unstable in salt water hunts unless you detune it. The Sand Shark is a PI machine.....it will hit on ANYTHING metal.... no discrimination. The Tiger Shark is a single freq. VLF....same problems that all the other ones have with salt water. If you want to dive (deeper than 10') and you want discrimination, the Excalibur is the only game in town.

 

[Tom_in_CA]

I'll add to what Mark says and say this: Admittedly the excalibur won't handle super bad mineralized sand. You'll recognize that by the gunpowder grey/black color/tones. For that, you'd admittedly need a pulse to cut it. But I've seen very few stretches of beach where it approached that bad. The examples would be gully-washes where streams come out of mountains after heavy rains. Or after storms cut nice steep good cuts, right at the base of some of those cuts.

But even in each of those extreme cases, you can usually just move out of it. Like in the case of how that's at the base of some cuts, you can just move a few yards away from that absolute bottom cusp of the cut, and you're out of it. Or cut the sens., slow do the sweep speed, raise the coil off the sand more, etc... Only in extreme examples has there been places where the excal truly wouldn't work.

I'm not sure if there's any under-sea bottoms that would fit that examples, but who knows. I've heard of some beaches (back east?) where ... supposedly after storm erosion, the entire beach becomes like that (and not just select zones or up right next to the cut). But I dunno.

 

[Tom Slick]

So it looks like the Excalibur wins...I figured as much...lol...no offense to the Tesoro, but I will NOT take a VLF machine anywhere near the ocean ever again.

FYI the Excal is a VLF. But it's the best VLF to use in a saltwater environment.

 

[cudamark]

I'll add to what Mark says and say this: Admittedly the excalibur won't handle super bad mineralized sand. You'll recognize that by the gunpowder grey/black color/tones. For that, you'd admittedly need a pulse to cut it. But I've seen very few stretches of beach where it approached that bad. The examples would be gully-washes where streams come out of mountains after heavy rains. Or after storms cut nice steep good cuts, right at the base of some of those cuts.

But even in each of those extreme cases, you can usually just move out of it. Like in the case of how that's at the base of some cuts, you can just move a few yards away from that absolute bottom cusp of the cut, and you're out of it. Or cut the sens., slow do the sweep speed, raise the coil off the sand more, etc... Only in extreme examples has there been places where the excal truly wouldn't work.

I'm not sure if there's any under-sea bottoms that would fit that examples, but who knows. I've heard of some beaches (back east?) where ... supposedly after storm erosion, the entire beach becomes like that (and not just select zones or up right next to the cut). But I dunno.

Thankfully, I haven't run across ground that bad yet! We have some pretty heavy black sand here locally but it doesn't seem to faze the Excalibur. Sometimes it's a bit "chatty" in discriminate mode, but I search in pin point where it seems unaffected. More depth too!