My 2 cents on multi tones vs. single tones...
It depends on where you are hunting how many tones you pick.
Roman field > Single tone, you want to dig it all.
Clean old historical farm field > Single tone, you want to dig it all.
Trashy old farm field > 2 tones, low tone for small rusty nails, dig all the rest.
Old city park or sports fields with tons of pull tabs, foil, bottle caps, etc > Multi tones, you do not want to dig up the whole park.
Old historical city house site > 2 tones, you wont find many pull tabs, foil etc, so dig it all above small rusty nails.
1950's city house > multi tones, so much trash if you have only 1 tone you will have to dig up the whole yard.
Fancy green manicured lawn like the city court house > you want multi tone and only use a FBS (Minelab) detector.
With my Etrac I can cherry pick out only the silver, Indians, and the very deep coins only. You dont want to dig 100 holes in this type of site.
Conclusion > A single tone detector is fine but it will truly restrict you from hunting many great sites.
> A multi tone detector opens up the doors to hunt pretty much all sites.
Cala is correct in saying that new technology is better. It just is.
I have been digging since 1977 and started with a Bounty Hunter single tone detector. You set the discrimination to (1) and dug every single target with no pin pointer (Can you imagine how it was with no pin pointer back in the day :/ in the mud. It took so long to find every target). (I still have this detector)
Since then I have or had:
Another Bounty Hunter
Ace 350
AT Pro
F44
F75SE
MXT All Pro
Etrac
(all with every coil imaginable)
You must pick the right detector, the right coil, and the number of tones based on the site and ground conditions you are going to hunt. i always have my Etrac, F75 and MXT with me when I hunt in case we change sites or the ground conditions change.
HH > Gary from Oregon