Whites XLT

[PoplarHill]

White's XLT

I am about to purchase my first "real" metal detector. I am a complete noob, but I'm looking to buy something that I will continue to use and not be looking to upgrade after the learning curve. I was wondering if the XLT would be a good choice and how easy it is to use. I will mostly be hunting old home sites, mill site and maybe dry beach areas around popular swimming holes. Will the XLT do a good job of finding coins, silver and gold? What about relics such as buttons, buckles, bullets, tools, etc?

Thanks!

 

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[Greg407]

The XLT was my first detector, and I would definitely recommend it. I found two of them at a garage sale and paid $50 total for them. That will probably be my best metal detecting related find ever, but I digress.

I found the XLT to be very easy to learn. I rarely made more changes to the preset programs than turning on the Tone ID, VCO, and sometimes pumping up the preamp gain.

I have found several silver coins including a recent two silver day (Walker half and Standing Lib quarter), three gold rings, and a lot of clad in my early park hunting days.

If you dig trashy areas, I definitely recommend the Bullseye 5.3 Coil (actually, I recommend it anyway). Though there are not many coils that are compatible with the XLT, this is a good one.

I have not had good luck with the XLT at salt water beaches. It doesn't do well there. I am not sure about fresh water beaches, though I imagine it will do okay.

I recently upgraded to a VX3, but I will be keeping one of my XLTs as my backup (I'd keep both if selling one wasn't a condition from my wife for buying the VX3).

Hope that helps a little.

HH

g

 

[cudamark]

The XLT is a fine machine....a bit dated, but you'll find lots of good stuff with it in the areas you mentioned. It also works very good on dry sand at a salt water beach. In the wet sand or ocean it's a different story. It's pretty worthless there. It's easy to master, but as with all detectors, you have to put in the hours to learn what it's telling you.

 

[Tom_in_CA]

reply

I am about to purchase my first "real" metal detector. I am a complete noob, but I'm looking to buy something that I will continue to use and not be looking to upgrade after the learning curve. I was wondering if the XLT would be a good choice and how easy it is to use. I will mostly be hunting old home sites, mill site and maybe dry beach areas around popular swimming holes. Will the XLT do a good job of finding coins, silver and gold? What about relics such as buttons, buckles, bullets, tools, etc?

Thanks!

As has been stated, that's a fairly dated machine. The fore-runner to that (the spectrum) is 20-something years old now. And the xlt was merely the spectrum, but in smaller lighter-weight package. There are deeper machines, etc... now.

My main dis-like of the spectrum and XLT was the annoying delay in the signal to the visual readout. And the "tail" of the signals. It's not going to be a good ghost-townsy type hunter, for instance. Prone to masking, even on the higher recovery speeds, IMHO. It also wasn't a good wet-salt beach machine. But for it's day, it was alright. I would not classify it as easy to learn. There's a million settings that can be fiddled with there. And humorously you probably won't be able to resist fiddling with them, "lest you be missing out", haha. I never met someone who went with the factory presets alone. They invariably had to "hop it up", because the felt they'd be missing out otherwise.

The good news is that tons of them were sold. So you can pick them up pretty cheap nowadays