First Summer Addiction of Metal Detecting....

[Author Man]

I'm wrapping up my first summer of MD'ing and it has been disappointing but finding one coin or one ring keeps me going like when I used to bet the trotters at Hazel Park. The excitement of seeing a coin in a clump of grass is a real high and one I want to explore more. Finding an old coin is a bonus and making banner is a dream....

I'm selling my Tesoro silver umax this winter and stepping up to a machine that has a LCD readout dial that tells me if it is a quarter or a dime and how deep it is. I'm willing to spend $500-700 for the right machine, new or used. It's not for beach hunting as much as it is coin and relic hunting in Upper Michigan loaded with iron ore. Mainly hunting old homestead and farms and schools, etc....

Like to see us get a UP group together too, eh?

Lots of smart people on this site and it has been a joy getting to know you from afar because I don't post much. I'm hoping you can help me with your thoughts on which is the best machine for me....

My little slice of heaven on Island lake....

HH and God Bless.....

 

[funkman]

author man...

I have the Ace 250 and have found many great finds with it. I am considering upgrading to a Minelab X-Terra 70 in the future and letting my son take the Ace for a swing. The X-Terra seems to be in your price range. The Minelabs are supposed to be good machines but so are the Whites. Read the different views that others have in the Metal Detector Reviews section and read all you can about the ones you narrow it down to. The main thing no matter what machine you get is to make sure you understand what the machine is telling you. The visual target ID is what the machine thinks it is but sometimes it isn;t. The case in point on my Ace is with aluminum cans which give me a great coin signal and show on the target ID as a coin but there are tricks that you need to learn to give you a better understanding on whether it is a coin or not. One way I tell is by swinging the coil over the target while lifting it further off the ground. If I can swing the coil a foot or more off the ground and still get that crisp 'BING BING" I now that it is a bigger target and more than likely not a coin. Just little things you need to learn on your machine.

Hope this helps and I am sure you will get some valuable information on this subject from others here.

Funkman

 

[mpostma]

I would second the Minelab Exterra 70 as a good machine. It would handle the tough mineralized UP ground well too.

I am a weekday troll, and a weekend honorary yooper. I hunt with a minelab Quattro. It handles the mineralized ground soooo much better than my older Whites did. UP ground can be tough. Ask Thompy for advise on that also, he would be very familiar with the issue.

Let me know how you come out on the UP group. I spend many weekends in the Germfask-Blaney Park area. I would love to hunt with someone rather than alone every weekend.

HH
Mark

 

[Planet1mars]

this is my first year and i found a lot of coins and 7 rings not all gold but with all that i already paid for my machine but please keep in mind i was going every other day since i cant work this is my excersise

 

[thompy]

i agree with the xt-70, the 50 aint bad eigther, but didnt like the pinpoint or all metal mode, i still think the m-6 would fit the bill but is heaver than the xterras

 

[xdanthemanx]

well i am runnin an xlt and i find that i dont look at the readout all that much its still 95% what you hear, you can only trust the readout in perfect conditions with fairly shallow targets, when i say perfect conditions i mean you have to be good at tweaking your machine on every site to open it up and then stabilize it to get the fairly perfect signals. A lot of these newer machines have tons of settings and can be very confusing, i have tried the dfx also, i still preffer the xlt, I think all of these machines work fine its a matter of how well you know your machine. I can honestly say i am leaving nothing behind me, Ian chacks my path all the time and comes up with nothing. I can also say that the umax you have is more than capable of finding all the same good stuff. if you go look at saginawian's posts from over this summer a lot of them were found with the same machine you have
. If you do get a new machine keep the old one around for a while you might find yourself going right back to it. allthough im running the whites xlt, the newer fisher machines seem to be spot on also.
and even with the fancy new machines, some old tiimer that's been sleeping with his machine for 20 years will come up behind you and pull a quarter out of the ground!!!
DanTheMan

 

[mpostma]

Hey Thompy,
So, in your opinion the X-70 handles the mineralized UP ground well?
I figured it would. I know my Quattro does very well compared to my older Whites machine.

HH
Mark

 

[thompy]

i find that many machines run pretty well even though the mineralization seems to be pretty high in all the areas Ive hit so far, unless you into the black magnitite or some of the local areas around some of the old gold and silver mines, then you really should have a GB adjustment, conditions can change pretty quick, for a while i thought about the quattro but don't think i can get myself to slow down to a point that it would be effective for me, i didn't get allot of time on the 70 but did like the prospect and disc mode, comparing targets between my t-2 and the 70 and 50 the t-2 has a slight edge in depth the 70 GB is allot better than the 50 for this area with its finner adjustments, also i didn't like the concentric coils on the xt's and fount them hard to pp at times, with the DD coils they are pretty awesome. Ive been happiest with the 2 filter whites, and really love the t-2, which really handles the old iron nails well. i should mention that i mostly relic hunt. i preferred the qxt over the xlt for my type of hunting seems to work in between iron better
i haven't really understood is how these detectors can work so well in the iron ore, like in the old caving grounds around Negaunee, where the houses were removed, and even along the train tracks where the iron ore pellets are 7-8 in. deep. i found a 6"cresent wrench in the pellets about 8-9 in. down, its a good size target, but once GB is set the machines run quite well. Ive still have to learn some tricks on the mineral front to better my prospecting chances. i have a buddy that found some gold in this black rock that i tested my machine on and i wouldn't have dug it, sounded like a hotrock, kind of fuzzy and the sample appears to have a pretty good amount of gold in it. we have 2 gold ranges real close to one another and Ive been poking around in the northern one that the gold is usually in a quartz matrix, dint know about the southern one, just from reading they talked about a softer rock that would gum up the old stamp mills, assuming this is what the black rock is.
I find that i don't look at my display much ether, and prefer the 2 tone setting on my t-2 and the whites QXTs, you can get allot of info out of a well modulated audio signal. thompy

 

[Planet1mars]

well said dan.... i have the cibola from tesoroland im going to buy a silver umax for my daughter... the only real diffrence from my cibola to the silver umax is that i have a bigger coil. tesoro told me i can pull a quater out at 18 inchs and i have one more knob than umax... dan will tell you that when i first started useing mine at the begging i was frustrated with till i learned my machine.. but after i found a 22k ring i figured what i was doing wrong after 6 months useing it and i go out every other day almost...that silver umax is a cherry picker. but if you want to sell ill buy it ..

 

[Author Man]

Thanks to all who responded. I think I will hang on to the umax until spring and put it up for trade/sell. Snow on the ground here in Republic and probably here to stay. HH and a special hey to all the vets out there. Your the man...or woman.....