Well, I was fortunate enough to be able to live in and around some of the the nastiest soil area on the planet. The worst soil I've ever seen is black, as in shiny black with black round rocks, and the only detector that works well enough there is a PI. I tried a couple of Minelabs there and all they would do is howl real loud, a steady loud sound like a cow bellowing. A cz worked a bit, but made a lot of noise. My Tejon sounded like a popcorn machine, and the Compass Scanner would only find things about one inch deep and it too made a bit too much noise, in fact, it made a lot of noise, but less than the others. The area was about 2/3 the way up the Washington coast up near the rainforests in a very remote place.
I live in the general area where Teknetics, Fisher, Compass, and White's were started. The reason they were started here is because of the high iron soil that was needed to test detectors so that they would work better in other soils too. Unfortunately, the market went East and to Europe and consequently most detectors now are best suited for soil that has less iron.
A well-known detectorist (name withheld at his request) says that on Texas beaches, nobody really needs an expensive detector there becuase there aren't any minerals in the beaches. I don't know, I've never checked there.
There must a real good reason why nearly nobody sees a Minelab within a hundred miles from here, except for at the beach or once in awhile out in the high desert. Yes, I own a Minelab still but only because I wanted to try a couple of them to see if what people claim is true. They do work very, VERY well here on high iron/high salt beaches, but that is where it seems to end.
Many Minelabs run like a brand new Lexus on salt or high-iron beaches many do very well for prospecting too, but here it's a very different story, because most people don't have as good of luck for coin searching here as in other areas..
Here is another good question to consider too;
Why are Fisher BoldBug 2's the most prevalent gold nugget hunters in Arizona?
They are. Overwhelmingly.
The lady who owns the local detector sales shop uses a Fisher Goldbug 2 to hunt nuggies in AZ. She sells White's and Fsihers of course, and she also carries Minelabs, however, the ones she sells seem to leave town or disappear somehow, because nobody ever talks about seeing one here, except for mine. People have a rather strange look on their faces when they see mine and say; "so that's a Minelab"?
I have never seen another Minelab within a hundred miles of here, except for in a metal detector sales shop and on the beach. The lady who owns the shop doesn't use a Minelab to hunt nuggets except once in awhile, isn't that curious? She doesn't use a White's nugget hunter either, unless she is trying to sell one, and she lives just 1/2 mile from White's main plant. Rather curious, I'd say.
Much of detector behavior does seem to depend much on the type of soil one hunts in, and in fact, there is an area about 80 miles N that was NOT hit by that (iron) meteor shower some 10,000 years ago. It's up in a town called Newberg, Oregon and even a cheaply made Bounty Hunter works well there. Actually a BH keeps up with the rest of the VW's just fine. GB is almost unnecessary, and there is less than 2 inches depth difference between a high-end White's, Fisher, Minelab, Tesoro, Garrett, Bounty Hunter, or a Compass, for depth of detection. And the discriminators work better there too..