Need some members advice

T

tadbitangelny

Greenie
Feb 27, 2013
18
1
Finger Lakes NY
Primary Interest:
All Treasure Hunting
Hello everyone
The Boyfriend and I are looking to purchase our first metal detector but with all the different information out there it is hard to pick which would be the best one for us. I was wondering if I could get some opinions from people who use them on a regular basis. We are looking for something in the $300 - $500 price range that has good tones and is easy to use for us "newbies". Just for a laugh we tried using my father's from the 50's or 60's and never did find anything but we sure could pick up radio signals with it lol. We will be using this primarily on some old homestead lands we got permission to look at and some old dump sites. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks
 

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Were you ever on a survival website?
That screen name looks familiar.

And you will get a LOT of responses here about that. Sadly brand loyalty gets ingrained into people after a few years of a machine and they will of course recommend theirs. I would look for a local here on the site and try theirs somewhere, go to the "NY" section and post an inquiry, I'm sure you will get people who are willing to assist you and let you try theirs to see what you like..

Oh yeah...and I would recommend a Whites' MXT. Easy to use and hard to "outgrow" :) (Sorry had to do it)
 

Whatever you get, practice with it before you take it out. Bury known good and bad targets and pass over them time and again until you know how your new machine acts.

As said, we all have a brand preferrence. I use a Garrett. I think they are very user friendly. You might look at their 250, 350 or AT-Pro.

Good luck with your decision and happy hunting!
 

Thank you both. I know that for many years growing up everyone said how Whites were the best but all the stuff we are seeing now say either Garrett or minelab (which is out of our price range). Thank you for the advice on burying stuff and practicing I'm glad I have some gold and silver to practice with. Does either of the ones mentioned above have removable coils that can be changed out for water coils?
 

I would think the Fisher F4-F5 Garrett 250-350 or Minelab 305-505 would all be good choices :headbang: and welcome to T-net
 

I believe a modern coils can be submerged but, only some detectors are completely water proof. As for different coils, usually you can purchase different sizes for your specific MD

Jay
 

tadbitangelny said:
Thank you both. I know that for many years growing up everyone said how Whites were the best but all the stuff we are seeing now say either Garrett or minelab (which is out of our price range). Thank you for the advice on burying stuff and practicing I'm glad I have some gold and silver to practice with. Does either of the ones mentioned above have removable coils that can be changed out for water coils?
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Pretty much EVERY detector on the market is going to have waterproof coils.
However, most of the control boxes aren't going to be waterproof. I know some are, but I have never heard of a search coil that is not waterproof. I'm sure they're out there, but any machine I have seen over 100.00 had waterproof coils so you're pretty safe there.
 

Check out all the manufactures websites to see what suits your fancy. Some are beep and dig MD's and others have screens that lie to you as to what a target is going to be. Tesoro is the only one that offers a life time warranty which you will probably never have to use anyway unlike the other makers. All coils today are water proof, but be careful not to raise the coil above the control box so water in the shaft doesn't flood the control box on some detectors. The AT Pro is much improved from the earlier version, and you can take it underwater up to ten feet so they say. I have other water detectors that I use for that. If you want to find gold rings you need to not disc out pull tabs as 90% of the gold rings are in that range and the rest are in foil.

Good Luck. Contact Bart of Big Boy's Hobbies as he is a sponsor here. http://bigboyshobbies.net/
 

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One thing to keep in mind when choosing your detector is weight. Some are significantly heavier than others which can be a problem for some of us females. Most specs for detectors will show weight with batteries in. The lightest are under three pounds, with other up to 4+ and that can make a huge difference if you are swinging it all day.
 

This is just my opinion and not based on quantifiable facts. I have held a friend's White, but have no other experience with them. It seems to me that as a beginner you want something like a Garrett 250 / 350 to learn on. Once you use that a year or so then you can consider a White's. I see the White's as more capable, but also more difficult to learn on. It seems more complicated to me. When I read posts by people with a White's, their talk is more technical. I thnk that is fine and wonderful, but not necessarily for a raw beginner. I certainly am open to further discussion from an experienced White's user.
 

Give the Tesoro's a good once over. Most are very stable and have a lifetime warranty. No ID screens in your price range (if thats what you are looking for), but lightweight and fast response.
Technetics seem to have a big following and good options/ID screen in the price range you are looking for. Don't go cheap on Chinese brands, they are the bottom of the barrel at this time.
Consider that you will be swinging it for a couple hours (weight) and the audio sound it makes. Some brands make such a racket that I would go bong bong bonkers if I listened to it for an hour.
Also batteries, 8AA batteries can set you back much more than a couple 9v and they really only give about 1-1/2 times the life of a 9v.
Go to a dealer and test them out or watch some youtube videos to get an idea of what you are getting yourself into.
 

Thanks everyone for the input. I'm wondering from those who use them do you like the ones with screens or not better. I have read some people like the screens better than just the tones and others say the ones with screens can be mis-leading. I would love to hear how you feel about either or. As for dealers I'm not sure I have ever heard of someone in our area that deals in metal dectectors but if anyone knows someone in the Finger Lakes area that does I'd be appreciated to have that passed along to me....Thanks again.
 

tadbitangelny said:
Thanks everyone for the input. I'm wondering from those who use them do you like the ones with screens or not better. I have read some people like the screens better than just the tones and others say the ones with screens can be mis-leading. I would love to hear how you feel about either or. As for dealers I'm not sure I have ever heard of someone in our area that deals in metal dectectors but if anyone knows someone in the Finger Lakes area that does I'd be appreciated to have that passed along to me....Thanks again.
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The "screen" is a discriminator. It discriminates between metal types. There are several types of those available. Some give numbers, to represent different metals. Others, such as the Garret GTI 1500 I have, indicate Gold, Iron, Coin, Bottlecap, etc. The problem with this system is that it can mislead. Small chunks of melted aluminum always look just like a coin. This is a problem if you have absolute faith in your machine and let it decide when you do or do not dig. The GTI series will give an initial indication when you sweep, and then tell you depth, size and type of find when you press the GTI button. This gives you a good indication, but is not absolute.

I go to a new area and dig almost every good hit. Some hits are phantom and I ignore those. As I dig I learn how my machine reads the soil in this area. Right now I am in a very sandy area loaded with packed pebbles and rocks. I never find anything here more than a few inches down. It would take a sledge hammer to pound a dime ten inches down. But that is just here. After over a month in this spot I dig about half my hits. There is trash specific to this area that I can identify easily by my GTI. When I move in a few weeks I will start over digging a higher percentage of my solid hits.

The GRI or Discriminator is just a tool. It is not an absolute. I cannot speak as to how other brands work in this area. However, if I changed to a Whites tomorrow, I would test it for a few days in a known area with test targets and then I would venture out digging most hits until I understood how the machine talked to me.

As you will see over and over, Foil and Gold are near each other on the scale of the Discriminator. It is worthwhile to dig more targets on that theory alone.
 

Thank you bear for discriminating for us the difference. I think we are leaning to the Garret Pro or 350 my dad said he might be interested in throwing in some extra cash towards one if he could use it occasionaly so I think we are going to do some more research and decide amongst us the best one. Wanted to thank everyone for all the great info it can be so confusing to look at all this stuff when you have no idea what your doing.
 

If you hunt sites with alot of bottle caps the ace350 will really drive you nutz...was my 1st unit thats what i came to learn about it i have a good used 1 but id never sell it to anyone i know because of all the falsing
 

I don't agree with the "entry level" or "beginner's" detector concept. I currently use a White's DFX. It can be programmed and adjusted in all sorts of ways but it also has standard programs that are turn on and go. It's a detector that you won't outgrow as you gain experience. I'm not knocking anyone's choice of detector and I only used the DFX as an example of a detector that can be dead simple to operate and yet capable of being adjusted and tweaked as the owner gains experience. There are many other brands and models that are just as good and have the same ability. What I'm trying to get at is that a turn-on-and-go entry level detector will always be entry level and you may find yourself wishing you had spent a little more money for a machine that can grow with you.

Just my two cents,
Storm
 

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