Need a new metal detector. Need Some Help Ace 250 Vrs 350 on others.

[Tenn treasure hunter]

Hey All,

I have had great success with my Ace 250, and it is still working good. However, me and my father have been hunting together and he has been using my beginner Teknectics. The ground wire has frayed out of the coil and no repair was possible. Anyways, I am looking for a replacement and I have been considering upgrading to a different metal detector and handing up(lol) the Ace 250. I have looked at the 350, but most online reviews have the 250 but not the 350. Is there something wrong with the 350 or is the 250 just as good. I have heard that minelab makes a good detector. I have also looked at the Treasure Commander TC1X and the Fisher F4, from other websites but you cant always trust a website, because they push what their affiliate wants them to sell.

Also anyone know of a good site that sells detectors at a good price. Most have the inflated price with all the extras I do not actually need.

Thanks for any consideration and knowledge. Trying to stay around $400, but preferably less.

 

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[gleaner1]

F4 is good. Look at whites and tesoro too. After you decide exactly what machine you want, have at least three different places quote it. Bart's Big Boy Hobbies is a good dealer and there are a half a dozen others worth looking into. They will all be at the same minimum base price set by the factory, its the shipping that changes the total price. Tell the dealer specifically that you dont want anything extra, just brand X, Model Y, in an unopened, factory sealed box. They will work with you if they want a sale. Sometimes all the extras dont affect the price, its just part of the "game" of the dealers.

 

[rodarian]

Let me just tell you that, Wayne, from metaldetectingstuff(also a vendor on this site) did an amazing job getting me into my new machine(just shipped today) and I highly recommend adding him as one of the three quotes to get. Nobody could beat the deal I got from him. I have the ace250 and I love it but for the extra $100, the ace350 offers a little more depth and the 8.5x11 DD coil for much better seperation.

 

[Tenn treasure hunter]

Thanks for the input. Now i get to add the whites coinmaster Gt to the List.

 

[rodarian]

can't go wrong with a whites machine plus, they don't usually throw any of there machines into a package bundle so that helps you there. GL!

 

[slink]

Last check fort bedford had a used F5 for 350.Less than a new f4 find a link in the supporting vendor section

 

[penzfan]

Minelab's a nice choice also...

 

[rick67]

My Whites GT had a bad recovery time. Sometimes it would seem to just freeze up. I retired it to a river this fall.

 

[Phantasman]

Last check fort bedford had a used F5 for 350.Less than a new f4 find a link in the supporting vendor section

That would be my choice. But you can see I have had a few of the choices in my past detector list below. The F5 was my main choice for 7 years. But it is a far step above the others, IMO. Lots of control and not a turn on an go machine,

I agree with Rick on CoinGT (and the XTerra) recovery time. Not much is a fast as the Eurotek Pro/Greeks, Fishers and even the new BH Pros (as you can see, that's the ones I chose).

Just my opinions from my own experiences, your milage may differ.

 

[bigfoot1]

I would avoid the treasure commander line...they are chinese beginer machines.they are the swarm ground efx....bad reviews

 

[donj]

And, keep in mind... you get what you pay for.

 

[TrpnBils]

Hey All,

I have had great success with my Ace 250, and it is still working good. However, me and my father have been hunting together and he has been using my beginner Teknectics. The ground wire has frayed out of the coil and no repair was possible. Anyways, I am looking for a replacement and I have been considering upgrading to a different metal detector and handing up(lol) the Ace 250. I have looked at the 350, but most online reviews have the 250 but not the 350. Is there something wrong with the 350 or is the 250 just as good. I have heard that minelab makes a good detector. I have also looked at the Treasure Commander TC1X and the Fisher F4, from other websites but you cant always trust a website, because they push what their affiliate wants them to sell.

Also anyone know of a good site that sells detectors at a good price. Most have the inflated price with all the extras I do not actually need.

Thanks for any consideration and knowledge. Trying to stay around $400, but preferably less.

Check out Fort Bedford Metal Detectors too. Keith is a vendor on this site and is a great guy. He's got some good deals going right now on the ones you're considering from the looks of it. I've traded in a detector, purchased two coils, and purchased on detector from him along with some other miscellaneous stuff and was never disappointed. He's a stand-up guy and will give you honest feedback should you have any questions. For what it's worth, he's got the Ace 350 for under $300 right now but lots of other options too.

 

[Dutchquade]

If I was in the USA I would check out Kellycodetectors.com as they have some awesome deals going including ACE 250 packages with lots of extra goodies for a few dollars more for less than $300.
I have read many reviews worldwide and Garrett and Fisher are coming up as good detectors,maybe not top class but for the money excellent.
Hope this helps.

 

[Skippy SH13]

Hey All,

I have had great success with my Ace 250, and it is still working good. However, me and my father have been hunting together and he has been using my beginner Teknectics. The ground wire has frayed out of the coil and no repair was possible. Anyways, I am looking for a replacement and I have been considering upgrading to a different metal detector and handing up(lol) the Ace 250. I have looked at the 350, but most online reviews have the 250 but not the 350. Is there something wrong with the 350 or is the 250 just as good.

I own both of them. I purchased the 350 first, and the 250 with the money I made selling the gold rings I found this year. My son uses the 250 primarily. I can tell you that both are capable machines, but the 350 is significantly better for a variety of reasons (as follows):
1) Discrimination of iron... While both machines have the same # of notches to discriminate, the notch discrimination on the 350 leans toward the iron, and compresses the upper end into just a few items for coins. The result is that I can fine tune the sounding of the notches to filter out things that annoy me. Primarily I no longer dig nearly as many gum wrappers, but still don't seem to have missed many gold pieces.
2) LOVE the Double-D. It feels very much like you're dragging a blade through the ground, rather than a ball of detection. As a result, you can isolate/pinpoint very easily. The length of the blade is quite handy, too. When using the 250, I felt like the concentric coil makes it hard to catch deeper items at the top and bottom edges of the coil, as a result, you pretty much have to slightly overlap all the swings. The size of the DD is actually 2 inches larger, too. For me, that means every sweep is full, and it's 2" less area I have to reswing on every pass. 5 swings saves a swing over the 250... This adds up in a hurry. My sons falls behind pretty quickly on the 250, though when used properly, he doesn't miss much.
3) pin-pointing - Wow. The DD "blade" in the middle sure makes it super easy to wiggle the coil over the item and hear "ding ding ding ding!" and isolate it to a 1" spot of ground, then you slowly drag backwards [edit: while wiggling side to side] until the dinging stops. The item is literally now at the top of the coil. I use the Garrett Pinpointer for the rest, but my recover time is about 3x faster in isolating with the DD over the concentric. Both work, but I find the DD to be faster... MUCH faster.

Both machines seem to think bottle caps are quarters, but I do find the 350 with the sensitivity within 2 notches from the top will display an iron signal on the bottle caps as you hit the edge of them. The 250 just thinks they're quarters (or I haven't figured out how to easily work it).

Only thing I can recommend is that you use it for a while before you make up your mind. EVERY machine has it's quirks. I've found that I can signal identify by watching the bouncing around on the discrimination.

one thing I LOVE about both the 250 and 350 which you may not get with other detectors is that when you discriminate out iron, you're not actually changing the detection (and thus losing depth)... the Garrett ACE series simply notches out the "Ding" sound in your headset. No loss of depth! Having the extra iron notches also helps me ID targets better in the ground, even when the sounds are going nuts. Love that, too!

-Skippy