capri, a lot of folks see the glitzy magazine ads, and raving reviews about the pulse machines great ability on the beach. They are touted as "beach" machines, afterall, eh? But all the ads fail to tell the un-informed that you can not pass up nails/iron (barring some second guessing on tones).
I see occasional beach pulse users show up on beaches near me (of which some are strewn with nails d/t their commerical history). And when you see them pulling their hair out digging non-stop nails, you ask them "why didn't you just buy a discriminating beach machine?" and they say "because this one heavily advertised that it was the deepest on the beach, and would/could pick up tinsel fine chains, etc...." And to the extent a few of these beach pulse guys do think they can pass nails by the tone, "nagging doubts" usually send them back to check on quite a few "just to make sure". And other times, I simply see them leave some beaches, to go to greener grounds (ie.: beaches with less nails).
To answer your questions about the excaliber can pick up coins and rings next to nails, if you're going slow. There could be some masking effect, if the nail is over the coin, or you're not listening carefully, etc.... This is true of any discriminator: If the machine is going to try to reject the iron, then go figure: if the two items are over (or extremely close) to each other, the signal won't be as clear, or will be "drawn down", etc... But that's just the price to pay for being able to pass iron. If that's a problem for you, then you're going to need to dig out all the nails, and detect underneath them, for "just in case". Obviously not an option in some places.
The excal. will pick up some pretty small stuff (little charms, small gold earings, etc..), but it won't get "as small" as your impulse will. Ie.: you will miss some tinsel fine gold chains, or earing studs, etc... by using a disc. machine. But once again: that's just the price you pay for needing to pass iron.
I do see some people BRISTLE at the thought that they might miss an earing stud or dainty tinsel thin chain. So they stubbornly stick to their pulses. But then they get disgusted at the ratios of 30 nails per condutive target. So it's like Las Vegas: sometimes you have to pay the odds, and know you simply can not have it all. You're sometimes better off to speed things up, knowing you'll have the other 99% of gold jewelry.
