Re: Looking for a saltwater beach & underwater detector
The Excal is high at $1000 street price, but you get what you pay for, it seems. If you are going to search the "lane," where the water and sand meet, make sure whatever detector you get has a scuff cover for the coil. Otherwise you have to epoxy coat it yourself. The wet sand is murder on the coil bottom.
I have a Tesoro Tiger Shark and really like it. Most underwater gear has to be rugged, which often means clunky. Through a bit of decent design, the T-Shark isn't bad in this regard. If you are interested in short rod use, I guess you want to dive with it and I have read a few reports from divers about the Tiger Shark ...they loved it. I have not tried it in the salt mode, and hear mixed reports as to how well it works - mostly due to it's use in wet salt sands. At the surf line, it is said to be erratic, even in the salt mode. Lets face it, that isnt a friendly place for any mono-freq, VLF detector in your price range.
The White's Beach Hunter ID is a reported VLF exception, although it has a bouyant coil as it comes from the factory, so that will present problems in the water. As I understand it, you have to return it to the factory to have the coil changed to a non-bouyant type - which then makes the thing difficult to swing in the air and surf. I don't know.
I did try a friends CZ-20 sometime back, another VLF model. I liked it and it seemed to work well, although it WAS clunky. It is a gooder in the salt, but is sadly out of production and repair service on used ones is said to be spotty.
Another option in the dive environment would be a PI unit, like the Tesoro Sand Shark. I'd recommend this one because it has an available scuff cover - no epoxy needed! Submerged use seems to be the forte of the PI unit, from what little I know of the matter. Anyway , I can highly recommend the Tesoro brand. Good products and an unbeatable warranty.
