What detector do you swing now? As for the F75, I thought about it and figured that it's waayyy too expensive for what a person is getting. Consider, for close to $1000 your getting a detector that has one available coil and except for a bit more info on the screen doesn't really offer anything groundbreaking. For $699 you can get an XTerra 70 with 3 coils, ground tracking, beach mode, and a notch that works on the high conductors too. As for depth claims.. that and a buck will buy me a cup of coffee. Despite all the hype associated with various VLF detectors (pics of backhoes, claims of being an 'illegal alien') the sad truth of the matter is thatVLF detectors had reached a plateau (depth wise) about 15-20 years ago and all the manufacturers are offering is really just new interpretations/packaging.. kinda like chewing your food; you can do it all day, but it all looks the same in the end. Then there's the MXT; no effective notching or tones, but a ton of coils with a killer all-metal mode at, what.. $630 ? For $1000, I'd get either a GTI 2500 pro pack or an Explorer SE. Even better, I'd just wait a few months till the new crop of discriminating PI's come out. They seem to want to be Minelab PI killers, so they'll have to show depth that will make a person leave his/her VLF's in the closet.. along with sensitivity down to 1 grain (gold nuggets). If you have a decent detector at peasent, I'd say stick with it. At most, buy a used one or something like the Ace 250. That way you won't get nailed as bad in the used market.
It might sound a bit like 'chicken little', but take a look at what happened when ML came out with their new PI; the market is now flooded with cheap ML PI's. Everyone want's the best and brightest. When PI's with disc. (effective to full depth too) come out, who will want a plain old VLF which, in other than mild ground, gets only middling depth with iffy disc.? I foresee a lot of high end VLF detectors being sold reel cheep in the near future.
One other thing to consider, when buying a detector, is why it's for sale. By this, I mean that if a detector is so $hit-hot.. why sell it? White's, Garrett, Minelab, Tesoro, First Texas, Fisher all sell a load of detectors and have been doing so for years. Therefor, there are a lot of detectors from each company out there. Now, despite all the BS being spouted on the various forums about which detector is 'best', which ones are seen the least on the classifieds and which the most? That ought to tell a person something. If someone really likes something, he/she will tend to keep it. If people are hanging onto certain detectors (brands/models) it might be worth looking into getting one of the harder to find, yet popular detectors. ..Willy.
