Well, I have spent a great deal of time hunting Oregon, Washington, and California beaches and on these beaches ALL the Minelab Explorers and ALL the Minelab Sovereigns suck for depth, including the GT. The Minelab x-terra 70 is a slight bit of an improvement, but it too is a bit on the slow side for our beaches.
Sure, those Minelabs do run quite smoothly, but that's the end of the discussion. The right Fishers, White's, and Tesoros all work well here and do go deeper than the Minelabs, although the DFX is a slowpoke just like the SE's, II, and Sovs are. The MXT's work very well on our beaches but not with the factory 950 coil. In fact they really do suck when equiped with that coil in our soil. The Nautiluses, Garretts, and Minelabs leave a lot to be disired because they were better designed for Eastern, Southern US soil and Central European soil, and not much thought was given for our uses here. Garrett designed an aftermarket chip to try to help with their difficulties here in the 1250-2500 series, but it still did not take care of the problem well enough. The Aces, all of them have lots of troubles in our soil too, from the 100 through the 500. Nauties make good boat anchors in our soils and you can take that one to the bank, but they work super well in the deep south.
The above I just wrote is not an opinion either, and personally I really wish there was some way for people to rationalize their statements and realize that when one detector works well on Texas, Florida, Jersey or other beaches, it doesn't mean that they would work well in other beaches some 3,000 miles away. Think of the Eastern USA as "regular" and the Western USA as "Mars".
It would serve those who live in high iron areas to make a better choice for different soils than to follow the recommendation of someone who lives in a completely different place. In our soils here there is often more than 1/4 cup of Fe ore, very different than in most other places. I have seen as much as 1/2 cup of iron with half a cup of silica all in the same cupfull of dirt, something that is never seen in other parts of the USA. Yes, I know that people have good intentions when they recommend a detector, but I really do become quite disenchanted and sympathetic when I see someone toss their Minelab into the trunk in pure and utter disgust when someone who totes a $239 Tesoro outhunts, outfinds, and out discovers someone with a machine that cost's 3X what the Tesoro does (when searching on our beaches or inland here). And I'm not talking about the high end Tesoros either, those too often have as much trouble in high iron soil as do the Minelabs and Garretts here. In the Rocky Mountains area the same above applies too, it's a different world here, and people need to make note of it.
I write this to inform, not to cause a problem, rather to save someone some unnecessary problem and expense in the future by purchasing the wrong detector for the wrong area. For a fact, my cz-70 or a cz3d or an F-75 or one of my old Compasses or a Silver uMax or Vaquero or Cibola with an 8X9 without a doubt will locate treasure on our beaches 1-2" deeper than a Minelab or Garrett or Nautilus when using similar coil sizes. the Tejon and the Cortez, etc, both have a b - - ch of a time here, inland AND on our beaches, they cannot and do not ground balance well at all, even when sent back to the factory to be readjusted and re-calibrated. They run with too high of gain for all that iron, just like the Fisher 1270, Tejon, and Nauties do.. This is not a joke, it's just the way it is.
No offense meant anyone, I just wanted to clear this up and make life a bit easier for Jon. And Jon, don't buy one until you try one. This is a very different world here than most of the rest of the USA. The most productive and best working detector I have ever found to use on Oregon beaches are the original Silver Saber, with various certain Fishers (and Compasses) coming in at a very close second.
EasyMoney
