wwva said:
Which are the Porche's, Honda's, Chevy's/Fords and the Daewoo's?
In other words, which are the overpriced, high-performance brands, the reliable brands, the middle-of-the-road brands and the.....well, crap brands.
As others have pointed out, there are many variables when it comes to what brand to use, but there are also good and lesser machines distributed under most every brand name. It all comes down to what you want to do with your MD and what the soil and water conditions are in the areas you plan to use it in.
If you only want to hunt for coins, jewelry and relics in soil with normal levels of mineralization, then many here would say Ace is the place, (the Ace 250 being a widely popular model of MD). If you want to use your machine in either fresh water, salt water, (and underwater), or if you have highly mineralized soil conditions, then you will likely want to look at other machines. And don't assume that a new machine will be better than an older model, just because the new one has an LCD display. Getting to know your machine and understanding what it is trying to tell you, is likely the most important part of TH'ing.
I still need to replace the coil wire on my old Compass MD, but I've taken it out for some test runs and I'm impressed. A similar unit with its capabilities on eBay, could run you as little as $30, or as high as $150, depending on a lot of variables, but for me, its worth as much as any MD selling in the $250 range even if it doesn't have a digital display. It will work in the highly mineralized soil here and it will detect gold, (and other non-ferrous materials), which many detectors can't. Since I'll be using my MD mainly for nugget hunting on land and in knee high depths of water, then its just the ticket for me.
F.
