The CXIII is a very good machine,
it will hold its own against any new detector of today.
It was designed to be a "do all" machine with major efforts towards prospecting, and cache hunting as well as coin hunting. I owned 1 for approx. 5 yrs during the early/mid 90s, and found tons of good coins, relics, etc. with it. It works especially well with the 5x10 elliptical coil which also lightens the detector quite a bit.
The design of machine was/is not a comfortable one, it requires 6 or 8 C size batts adding to the weight, and ease of swing was an issue with me. Those were the only major draw backs I found, and was why I ended up selling mine.
The overall performance of the machine is still just about unbeatable, the depth is good, the ID meter is good, (especially if you have the 2nd generation machine from the mid 90s with Power Master Circuitry which was an up-graded micro chip from 10 bits to 12 bits) and you can also attach the 2 box depth multiplier for cache hunting (1 of only 3 Garrett machines made that accepts it).
The machine also has "VCO" pin-pointing which is deadly accurate (a feature I wish all top end machines had).
Advice/tips,
1: turn the "Treasure talk" feature off while hunting-- it has no viable/beneficial use whatsoever, it will slow your hunting down, and will drive you nuts + it helps wear out the batts faster.
2: hunt in all metal "motion mode" (not true all metal "non motion mode") for best results, added depth, and most variety of finds while hunting (especially in less trashy areas).
3: For gold "prospecting" - use "True all metal non motion mode" to find small nuggets.
4: Turn on "Bi-Level" tone ID so that you don't miss good relics, and can tell the difference in what is under the coil. 1 mistake guys made with these detecors which caused them to miss a LOT of good targets was, they used only "Bell Tone" because they like/d the sound (but) the problem with that is, you'll miss good brass, nickel, gold, etc. targets because they don't ring like coins do with only the "Bell tone" on. You need to hear the multi tone to tell if you're over gold, brass, nickel, etc.
Hope this helps, and good luck with your finds!
HH
Lonewolfe
k
